Literatur – Page 6 – Writer Between Worlds

Times

Are you disillusioned because the world has gotten worse? Or has the world gotten worse because you’re disillusioned? Was it ever beautiful, spellbinding, full of magic, fresh, or were your eyes just kinder then? Were you under the spell of youth? Did you believe in fairies and princes and happy ends, and the pale pinkness…
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Frühling in Andalusien

I thought I’d try something new today: My Andalusian travel essay in German for my German-speaking followers ;-). It’s a first for me, but here it is: Auf den Spuren Maurischer Kultur Tag 1. Der Genuss des individuellen Reisens Die Leute um mich herum schauen auf ihre Handys. Ich schaue aus dem Fenster. Mir hat das…
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The fighter jets

It’s every day now. Can you hear the air shake? Several times a day those metal birds, sharp-beaked, slice a thin gash through the arched canopy of blue under which silent people walk (or walk their dogs), their gaze, as always, buried in the mud, the soft footpath, the yellowed hay – last year’s grass…
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Quiet

I have nothing to say. Today, I just want to be quiet, enjoy the luxury of a light breeze in the dry reeds, the popping of their ochre in the sun, the crunching of white pebbles underfoot in the black mire by the lake. Today I want to watch the empty windowsills and the roofs…
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Conquest manual

– a poem – Step 1. Make people lonely. Step 2. Give lonely people a machine that talks. Tell them jokes. Make them laugh. Free of charge. Step 3. Tweak said machine so that it tells these people only what they like to hear. Step 4. Let it offer answers, plenty of answers while memorizing…
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Confirm humanity

‘Confirm humanity,’ the website urges and presents me with a checkbox to tick. I’d simply wanted to treat myself to a daily poem, that’s why I’m signing up for their newsletter, but, at this point, I am confronted with an existential issue: A. Is my humanity confined to that little checkbox? Is that what it…
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Good tidings

Today, I’ve had the first piece of good news after a week of battling the flu: Parfumul Evei, a novella I wrote in Romanian has been shortlisted for the Romanian National Literary Network award 2024. I’ll leave you with the happy announcement (plus the glorious Upper Bavarian countryside), while I go back to making teas…
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Primates

This is a cynical little poem inspired by an actual news story I heard on the radio today. I don’t have all the facts, so the piece is slightly fictionalized and may not be entirely accurate, but it seemed like an interesting cautionary fable. There is some profanity and sarcasm. Please don’t get triggered, this…
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Quote of the day

“Succeeding the Author, the scriptor no longer bears within him passions, humours, feelings, impressions, but rather this immense dictionary from which he draws a writing that can know no halt: life never does more than imitate the book, and the book itself is only a tissue of signs, an imitation that is lost, infinitely deferred.”…
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Roamers

I like the people here, by the river: wood-roamers, quiet-seekers, seekers of quiet truths that need no explanation, hunters of oxygen and light and the late-rising brume, dog-walkers, gatherers of solace, birdwatchers – seekers of the trilling heart, vagrant explorers, yielders to the humming fullness, finders of quiet joy contained in greens and blues. no…
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The mountain

Knee-deep in snow, the mountain sits in stillness while we climb. Our skis, wading through powder, cut two tiny paths through the amnesia of whiteness. Ahead of us, blank page. The forest’s blotted out. A house we passed? A cross-hatch, receding in the distance. The peak? A mass of blur. You crane your neck, ‘How…
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Immersed

I’d like there to be only quiet between us. Let us swim in a sea of quiet, lurking below the surface like the basking sharks or with our heads bobbing above the waves like two forgotten buoys far from the freighters’ routes or, better yet, let us make somersaults like the dolphins. I’ll know what…
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Category: Literatur