Unhappy faces collection.

How Dracula Makes Me Feel

On this aestival evening

I find myself filled with love, lust, hunger, hatred, poems, filth AND GREED!

DEPRES[SHUN]S.

I worship at the fount of my OWN BLOODY TEARS

So, go ahead. Cry why don't you. No?

FULL FORCE might have been an exaggeration. This blog is back in partial force, mostly because I'm mentally lazy. However, I don't want this to be some forum for my self-deprecation, so I'll share something cool I've been working on for my new German seminar. Yesterday our professor and my classmates (and I) spent a few hours going over some essays by Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, a passionate writer on medieval art and Romantic values in art. His most famous collection of writings, from which we took a couple of select pieces, is Herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders. 'Outpourings of an art-loving friar'! The drama of that title is fantastic. The drama of the essays is fantastic. "Rhapsodic" is a great word to describe them, a word which I knew but pinched from someone else's article on the Herzensergiessungen. They're all about the passion required to make art, the inspiration to be found in nature, and the presence of the divine in nature and in art; art and nature are the two languages through which the transcendent, and unspeakable, can be experienced or expressed by man.
Here are a couple of poetic selections that I liked best (my own translations, so bear with me):

Kunst ist die Blume menschlicher Empfindung zu nennen.
"Art is the blossom of human feeling."

...nächst der Theologie, unter allen Wissenschaften und Künsten des menschlichen Geistes, die Musik den ersten Platz einnehme.
"Next to theology, before all the knowledge and art born of the human spirit, music's place is the most sublime."

Das Säuseln in den Wipfeln des Waldes, und das Rollen des Donners, haben mir geheimnisvolle Dinge von ihm erzählt, die ich in Worten nicht aufsetzen kann.
"He speaks secretly to me in the whispering wind through the treetops and the rumble of thunder, of things which I cannot set down in words."

Blogsurrection.

Dear Two Readers,
For the time being, this blog is back -- FULL FORCE. I want a place to post photos of things, to discuss stuff that I like and don't like, and to show off my spectacular lameness.

With love,
Das Mädel

Hello, Maedel (?)

I might bring this blog back, if I can think of anything cool and interesting to say in it on a regular basis.

R.

I had some visitors.

And we had us a grand ole time. Here are some pictures from May 17 - 23. The people in the photos are my grandparents, John and Judy Benson, who were very sweet/gracious as I dragged them around Bonn (and Heidelberg!) with me.

John and Judy, in front of their hotel


Our first night, at the tapas restaurant. John is sampling his first German beer; a Kölsch.


Here they are in front of the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle, the art museum, after seeing a bunch of ancient Chinese artefacts with me. We also took a stroll around the 'garden' on the roof. I'll post photos of that some other time.


The view from "Zum Rheinblick," my favorite spot/Biergarten on the river.


Judy likes the wine.


John with a Bitburger Pils, a very popular beer around here. "Bitte ein Bit!"


John taking a chunk out of "the best sausage [I've] ever had."


Getting rained on in beautiful Heidelberg.


We only half-toured this castle; maybe we'll go back someday.


Waiting in the foyer for the tour to start.


Another gorgeous building in Heidelberg. Not sure what it's used for.


A suit of armor in the Schloss.


Maybe this was a sarcophagus lid; or hung on a wall.


An absolutely gigantic sculpture in the center of Heidelberg. I assume nobody knows why it was put there.


Outside the Heidelberg train station. I really wish we'd had more time in the city.


I fed this guy some Pringles while we waited for our train. About ten minutes after he flew off, there was an enormous wind/rain storm and I was cleaning the dust out of my eyes a day later.


We socialized with some natives at the Bonn botanical gardens.


More beer at the tapas restaurant.


Hittin' the Bit one last time before they left the next morning.

I decided to just replace the last post with a new one because all the stuff I was babbling about earlier is only interesting in the time period it happened, and eh, really, maybe not particularly interesting in any context.
Life's been pretty laidback around here lately. The only exciting news to report is that my mother's parents are coming to Germany this Wednesday to visit for a week. Hopefully I'll have some good photographs to post on the blog after their stay.

On a personal note, I recently discovered a great old jazz act from the '30s called The Mills Brothers.
If you click this link, you can actually download an entire album of their hits (best to do this only if you have a broadband connection) for free. Just select "free" from the Rapid Share menu near the bottom of the page and wait about a minute for the download to begin.

Update: Why I think this has real promise.

So, after some minor negative feedback about this post, I've realized that I need to provide a little more background when I'm sharing outside internet links that interest me. "Luther at the Movies" is a parody/humor blog involving critiques of contemporary film by someone who's assumed the personality of Martin Luther, the German theologian whose works/teachings were the catalyst for the Protestant Reformation. I think it's great, clever, different, hilarious. I don't find anything particularly unsavory about it. It should probably be said that my tastes occasionally gravitate toward things which are genuinely offensive, but I doubt I'll post anything particularly incendiary here.
Anyway, take a look at Luther; the writing is great. Recently the old goat has been arguing with Japus Gassalascus, a personality associated with another blog I really enjoy (which happens to be fairly conservative, and run by Jesuits.) It's called The New Pantagruel and might not appeal to any of you either, but my interests, as I said, tend to be a little outré. I apologize for any discomfort, but make no retractions.

On another note, Germany is kind of boring right now. I'm going to try to get out a bit this week to another museum or something. I hope to come back with pictures, or at least an amusing anecdote about the elderly.
I've also updated the archived entry on Found magazine.

Frühling (Spring)

It's become very beautiful in Bonn and I took the opportunity today to go out and enjoy the weather. I made a trip to the Botanical Gardens to see the flowers, while they last, and take some photographs. I was starving by the end, so I bought a small mandarin orange and coconut cake on the way back. It was fantastic. The ladies selling it apologized to me that it had been baked before noon and therefore wasn't AS fresh as possible. If they only knew I come from America and would probably have just bought week-old grocery store Entenmann's donuts if I were home.
Anyhow, here are the pictures. Also included are a few from my neighborhood. It's really pretty perfect here -- though I do miss springtime in New York and Connecticut.

--

Tree just outside my window


Flower boxes on the first floor of my building


Someone's little Easter shrub


Another flowering tree in my neighborhood


Clemensruhe(building) and some of the gardens


An odd statue on the grounds


Tulips and other flowers

Holy Thursday was lovely for me. As I mentioned, I went to hear the Johannes-Passion performed at the Beethoven Halle, conducted by the world-famous Raymond Leppard. Anyone who ever has the chance to hear Bach, played live, should take up on it. As wonderful as it is to listen to recorded music at home, there isn't anything that really compares with the energy of a live performance. There is a hypnotic sort of communion that can take place between the singers, orchestra and the audience. If you're lucky, for a short while, you can forget everything in the world but the sound.
Here are two pictures from the end of the concert, during applause and curtain calls, where the lead singers receive their flowers. (Also, a cultural tidbit: Germans clap for at least twenty minutes straight after the performance, through several curtain calls. Applauding your performers becomes a performance in itself. You can sneak out early, but somehow it just feels wrong.)








And as a bonus, Claudia. This is Claudia hard at work correcting an essay of mine. To chop through so thick a forest of errors requires nothing less than Zen-like concentration.

Mondaufgang am Meer (Moonrise Over the Sea)

By Caspar David Friedrich, 1882.

More people, fewer places, a couple of signs.

Not much new happening except I finally sucked it up and decided to go to Berlin with the rest of the junior-year crowd (from June 7 to June 12.) Let's face facts; I'm so lazy I probably wouldn't have seen it otherwise. If someone's willing to haul me across Germany at little to no expense, I might as well submit. I'm anticipating the trip to be 70% irritating/stressful, but I'm hoping this crochety attitude is only due to lingering pessimism from the Marksburg excursion.
On another note, below are some older and newer photos. En-joy.

Hunger-induced dementia obviously responsible for this ill-considered foray into self-documentary. (And yes, I did take this in my bathroom. I'm also aware that I look like an extra from someone's high school production of 'Oklahoma!'.)


Some friends of mine, He-Young and Ya-Ling, at café Pathos on our last day of orientation. Just look at 'em. And you thought kittens were cute.


Same café. Yu (the boy) and Ying-Chu. Yu and I still have class together. Ying-Chu has gone elsewhere; she is missed.


This is one of two anti-Bush/Cheney signs I came across in the Münsterplatz (Bonn's main square.) "Bush in die Gummizelle" means "Bush in a padded room" and "Cheney ins Gefängnis" means "Cheney in prison" (the bars probably gave that away.) It's interesting to see that people in a small city in western Germany are so engaged with American politics.


The second sign. "Stürzt Cheney bevor erden Iran nuklear bombardiert" means, essentially, "Overthrow Cheney before he nukes Iran."

FOUND magazine

"Dear God, help my brother from monsters."

This is an item from Found Magazine, a magazine devoted to displaying little notes and pictures that people have lost and which other people have found. The finds tend to be strange, primitive, poignant, and funny. It's a unique idea. The creator of Found also has an entire book devoted to a cache of photographs of people from an obscure Indiana town.
"La Porte, Indiana" can be bought here.