Of mediocrity and perfection

At work I was looking for information about Lulu Wang, a writer who has grow up in China, and lives in the Nederland’s, so I found this page http://www.luluwang.nl, and I’m shocked that I understand Dutch as well as I do. My first thought was, in school I studied German for five years, but I think I understand Dutch better then I understand German. Probably not true.

I could point out that three of the authors I have read this year could be said being part of “an Asian diaspora”: Jung Chang (born in China, lives in Great Britain), Gao Xingjian (born in China, lives in France) and V. S. Naipaul (born on Trinidad by Indian parents, lives in Great Britain). Is there any reason for that? Well, it’s fascinating with people who can make themselves a life in a new country, a new country with a different language, for me that’s one of the most difficult things I could imagine for myself. But that’s common nowadays, now all continents are effected by migration.

Then I can’t deny there’s something fascinating about Asia. If we just look at progress we have, 100 of millions who have taken themselves out of poverty, Tiger Economies, Japan and Japans explicit goal of taking 30 Nobel prizes in the years 2000-2050 (btw I wonder if USA didn’t take more then 30 Nobel prizes during the second half of the 20-century).

Everyday I see a handful of books I want to read, today, for example, it was one book about the witch process in early 17-century Basque – the largest witch process in history with nearly 2000 accused - , one book about the Romani people and one large art book with Gustav Klimt - a book with Art Nouveau (which I guess it was called "Jugend" in Vienna) and erotic paintings made by an artist in fin de siecle Vienna, the capital of the Donau Monarchy. I wrote this down to demonstrate that my thirst for knowledge is, well what words should I use: “all over the place”? Being intressed in a little bit of everything, there's some good things about that ... And I know I have used the phrase “fin de siecle” a lot in this journal – also I like the name der Donaumonarchie.

Friday next week I’ll be working alone in the store, I have been alone there before, but not for a whole day. I have no idea how it will go. Well the worst thing is if customers want recommendations for books or records. Mostly I can’t help at all. For example one time a customer asked for records with the type of music they played in cabarets and nightclubs in interwar Germany. Yes I really got that question, it’s not like I making up the story just to get an excuse to write down one line from Berlin, Alexanderplatz (1929) by Alfred Döblin the line that Berlin was “Sodom on the eve of its destruction”. If I had made it up just to get that excuse it would have been creative of me, but I didn’t.

Forget that, now I almost want to get the flu formerly known as swine flu, apparently the official name is ”Novel influenza”. Just so that I, after I have get well, can think “that none of my concern, been there, down that, and now I’m immune” every time they start nagging about it on the news.

Otherwise since I read The man without qualities, the novel that take place during the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, I have read one and a half book about the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Now I have just finished The leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, it starts with the fall of the Kingdom of the Two Scillies. So now I’m going to read history books about the Kingdom of the two Scillies. Or not, the thing is just that I have some kind of thirst for knowledge that I don’t know what I should do with.

Let me tell you an anecdote, ones upon a time a sixteen year old boy with dreams of becoming an artist, sold his first painting. The buyer was a goldsmith, strengthen by the success, the boy asked for the payment in gold. The goldsmith cut out a peace, worth 600 Swedish Krona, from a rolled gold plate, and said – You get this, on one condition, that you make something out of it.
   - But I don’t know anything about gold smithery.
   - You don’t have to, you can just saw out a figure.
   So the boy took the small gold plate, draw the profile of a raven on it and saw it out. Then he turned it into one piercing jewellery, pierced his ear and has been wearing the gold raven there since that.
    Or that was the story the man told me then I, over coffee, asked if he had a penguin in his ear. I often has coffee with so creative people, nowadays.

Yesterday a customer asked for Euripides Medea, - In school we will tune in into a science fiction story. Nice to see that teacher still use the old "transform classic Greek drama to science fiction pedagogic™".