Uncredited Photographer German Anti-fascist Intellectuals Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht Playing Chess While in Exile, Skovsbostrand, Denmark 1934
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I am the neighbor. The one who turned him in. We don’t want an agitator here in our building.
When we hung out the swastika, He didn’t hang one out. When we asked him why he didn’t, He asked us if we had any room in our little apartment Where we live with four children, for a flag pole. When we told him that we believed in the future, He laughed.
We didn’t like that they beat him up In the stairwell. And tore up his jacket, too. They shouldn’t have done that. None of us have a lot of jackets.
At least he is gone now, and the building is quiet. We have enough worries, so It’s important to at least have peace and quiet.
Of course we see how some folks Look the other way, when they meet us. But those who took him away, say That we did the right thing.
– Bertolt Brecht, “The Neighbor” 1934
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Ich bin der Nachbar. Ich habe ihn angezeigt. Wir wollen in unserem Haus Keinen Hetzer haben.
Als wir die Hakenkreuzfahne heraushängten Hat er keine herausgehängt Als wir ihn dazu aufforderten Hat er uns gefragt, ob wir in unserer Stube In der wir mit vier Kindern wohnen Noch Platz haben für eine Fahnenstange. Als wir sagten, daß wir wieder an die Zukunft glaubten Hat er gelacht.
Daß sie ihn auf der Treppe geschlagen haben Hat uns nicht gefallen. Sie haben ihm den Kittel zerrissen. Das wäre nicht nötig gewesen. So viele Kittel Hat keiner von uns.
Aber jetzt ist er wenigstens weg und im Haus herrscht Ruhe. Wir haben genug Sorgen im Kopf, da Muß wenigstens Ruhe herrschen.
Wir sehen schon, einige Leute Schauen weg, wenn sie uns begegnen. Aber Die ihn abgeholt haben, sagen Daß wir uns richtig verhalten haben.
– Bertolt Brecht, “Der Nachbar” 1934
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“…There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism…” Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History” from Thesis VII 1940
“…Es ist niemals ein Dokument der Kultur, ohne zugleich ein solches der Barbarei zu sein…” Walter Benjamin, “Über den Begriff der Geschichte” von These VII 1940
A rare cloudless picture of Ireland , from the lads in the International Space Station.
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I am the wind which breathes upon the sea, I am the wave of the ocean, I am the murmur of the billows. Amergin Glúingel, The Song of Amergin
I hate much of what’s written about Celtic spirituality. Dreamscapes of ancestors who lived at one with the earth are drawn without any question about how they ate, where they shat, how they grieved or fought. It is all well and good to think about the thin places where the living and the dead interacted, but what about the winter?
I heard a retreat leader – a visitor who spoke not a word of Irish – speak about a valley in Wicklow once. Wicklow is known as the garden of Ireland.
It has heathers that are purple and green and yellow and moss brown. “Look at the inherent spirituality of the valley,” he said. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I thought. Landscapes don’t have spirituality; this one had heather, or, in Irish fraoch. It comes from a word meaning rage, or fury, or fierceness. Fraoch is gorgeous on the eye, tough for eating. I wondered about people –from thousands of years back – from that valley. It must have been admired for generations, beauty in the eyes of the ancestral beholders. But what animals would thrive in such thick bracken? What could a mammal eat from there without ripping its tongue? What farmers farmed there? What invaders claimed there? Where is the blood spilt? Who has wept there?
Who ran away from there? What is the story that the landscape has held?
If we are to speak about spirituality, we must speak about breathing and dying. Spirit, from spirare, meaning to breathe. To be spiritual is to breathe, to be unspiritual is to die; it is the most concrete thing we can think of.
Allied Forces began the bombing of Dresden on 13 February 1945, with more than 1200 British and US planes dropping around 4,000 bombs on the city, destroying more than 1,600 acres and killing more than 25,000 people (German media falsely claimed that more than 200,000 had been killed).
The bombing of Dresden is frequently cited as a needless, deliberate act of cruelty inflicted by the Allies on the Germans. Historians argue that the outcome of the war had already been decided, and therefore the destruction served little military purpose.
22-year-old Kurt Vonnegut was a POW in Dresden at the time and witnessed the destruction (Vonnegut survived by hiding in an underground meat locker of a slaughterhouse). He was forced to excavate corpses from the charred rubble. Vonnegut wrote about his experience in Slaughterhouse-Five (1969).
Vonnegut wrote in the 1976 edition of the novel, “The Dresden atrocity, tremendously expensive and meticulously planned, was so meaningless, finally, that only one person on the entire planet got any benefit from it. I am that person. I wrote this book, which earned a lot of money for me and made my reputation, such as it is. One way or another, I got two or three dollars for every person killed. Some business I’m in.”
“You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby.
But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
TiL (click to go to the thread, which probably has more interesting tidbits I missed).
Bonus:
These are my people.
Betting I’ve reblogged this before. Betting I’ll reblog it when it turns up again.
In addition to the print terminology stuff: the visual shorthand icons and ad graphics for something about writing are still often pen-nibs, fountain pens and typewriters…
…while graphics of a monitor, keyboard and mouse remain visual shorthand for computing…
…even though most writers now use monitor / keyboard / mouse or even laptop / touchpad.
In addition, headers for “this blog / website is about writing” are often in one of the many imitation typewriter fonts complete with smudges, or just Courier.
The start and end call icons on most / all smartphones is still the handset of a classic desk telephone, and sometimes the open-app icon is a complete phone.
The term “hang up” for “end the call” refers to something even older - one of these…
And of course the Save icon
is indeed a 3½ inch floppy disc.
Why it wasn’t a
5¼
floppy is a mystery. The icon version is just as distinctive.
Also, why various OP updates never changed “Save” to the graphic of a CD / DVD or flash drive is another mystery, and nowadays a Save icon should probably be a cartoon cloud.
Graphics and terminology are funny things.
reblogging this again for EVEN MORE information.
I’m mostly entertained by the guy who thinks you need to know that “case” means “box” in French as though that’s not what it means in English.
skeumorphism my beloved
It’s fascinating. This post alternately made me feel old and taught me something. Tumblr is amazing.
And because we continue to use signs of ancient hardware, youngsters come up with questions like “why is the icon for ‘save’ a vending machine with a can of soda?” (One day I’ll find that post and link it)
Hana-Rawhiti Kareariki Maipi-Clarke, the youngest MP in Aotearoa, starts a haka to protest the first vote on a bill reinterpreting the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi
