Promises

Friday: a day of things whose colors were muted, rather dull colors mixed with gray; but those things, quiet and apparently unimportant, were nonetheless good, and important.

Reading Sontag on Goodman and Artaud, for no real reason, just because it was the book I picked up on the way to the bus, on the way to the doctor. Thrilling moments, full of that fantastic intelligence, that honesty, flashes of depth that promise to answer the questions that have bothered me lately – that is, how to live in a way that is worthy of its own needs. And such balanced, fused glances at the entire history of the twentieth century – even when that's not the point of the article, her ability to put it all together in such powerful ways. And the dazzling images of how she wrote at the time, in 1972 – a small apartment in Paris, an ascetic approach to life, creating for herself a space to do absolutely nothing but make words....

Then the doctor: casual, a 'professional' visit, where we both know so much of what we're talking about that we practically communicate in telegraphic code. He'll check the tests to see if my worries about my liver matter at all, or are just illusions made out of transient winter viruses; he's a bit concerned about my cholesterol (a side effect of my medications), but we agreed that rather than adding a cholesterol medication just yet, I'll use this as another thing impelling me to get some exercise.

Best of all: Kaletra, the most obnoxious and probably most important medicine I've been taking for – what? seven years now? – has finally been 'reformulated'. It's still basically the same stuff – it still has ritonavir in it, unhappily (doctors like ritonavir because, although it has a miserable effect on fatigue, mood, and the whole gastrointestinal system, it stays in that system, and keeps everything else with it – just what we need, something toxic that sticks around). But the reformulation, reputedly, cuts down on side effects – he says all his patients keep sending him messages saying, thank God, this is so much easier, why didn't they do a reformulation three years ago....

So that's good. Promises of feeling much better.

Online was a Quicktime copy of Wender's Wings of Desire, which I've promised myself I would see for nineteen years, since it first came out – my most interesting teacher at the time, the aggressive but brilliant composer named Paul Reale, considered it a must-see (and, given his anti-minimalist polemics, I'm sure he thought it was an antidote to the whole postmodern wave of 1980s art). It's beautiful, shades of grays and shimmering music (and ideas – why didn't anyone tell me Peter Handke was involved in writing the script), much more surprising and textured, and much more about Berlin than I'd realized – I think I put off seeing it because I was worried that it would be disappointing. It is really a sort of beautiful heartache movie, not just because of what it is, but also because it's about Berlin... which was my first overwhelming experience of a real Europe: huge apartments and those great dark courtyards – a city that gives you so much sheer room – space to live, vast spaces to think and do and act, a city that offers genius amid the rain and the schnauze. But it's also a city that sits heavily on your shoulders: the excitement comes with a cost, that of the sheer heaviness, the darkness, of overwhelming histories, of traditions, of powerful minds and terrible cruelties....

In comparison, my beloved cities – San Francisco, Sydney, Amsterdam – are blithe baubles. And even New York merely seems young, almost tentative, next to Berlin.

So it was a day of promises. Such an important aspect of living – they used to say in est seminars that it was our promises to ourselves that were so important, as they were the sources of everything else in our lives. Unfortunately, I have always been a bit scattered about my promises to myself – not like an uncaring friend, but more like a rather helpless and inept single parent, one who confusedly promises that things will get better, that we'll go to the park, to the circus, and then when there's not any money for the bus simply says, sorry kid, that's the way it goes. Which may be why I am always so saddened, and angered, by my own bad faith with colleagues – books I am supposed to write, research I'm supposed to do, in order to keep promises to Gerhard, to Meredith, to V–....

But the change in medications, the depth of some of the things I read and looked at today, suggests a promise (even in a month like November!) of some kind of renewal: of a new set of promises, that could actually be kept.

Comments

[michael roloff]

I wanted to alert you to a variety of links on the work of Peter Handke:

http://www.handke.scriptmania.com
http://www.handkeromance.scriptmania.com
http://www.handkedrama.scriptmania.com
http://www.handkelectures.freeservers.com

http://www.kultur.at/lesen/index.htm
http://begleitschreiben.twoday.net/stories/2504464/
http://www.zeit.de/2006/39/Grass-Handke
http://www.handkelectures.freeservers.com

MICHAEL ROLOFF
http://roloff.freeservers.com/about.html
http://handke-discussion.blogspot.com/
http://www.artscritic.blogspot.com
SCRIPTMANIA PROJECT MAIN SITE: http://www.handke.scriptmania.com
http://summapolitico.blogspot.com

"MAY THE FOGGY DEW BEDIAMONDIZE YOUR HOOSPRINGS!" {J. Joyce}

"Sryde Lyde Myde Vorworde Vorhorde Vorborde" [von Alvensleben]

[Comment edited by blog author; I removed repeated web addresses and corrected the English, a little bit.]