maandag 1 oktober 2012

future cucumbers

next week I'll go back to Weimar
to challenge Bach and Nietzsche
and grow cucumbers in Goethe's garden in memory of W.G. Sebald
who once (and at other times in other words) said in an interview when he was asked if he could imagine to stop doing the things he was doing to live his life:

"I could just as well work in a greenhouse, growing cucumbers. It has this advantage: If you produce a decent cucumber there's no discussion about it."

or in his original words:

"Ich kann genausogut im Treibhaus arbeiten, Gürken züchten. Das hat den Vorteil: Wenn Sie eine anständige Gurke haben, nicht?, dann gibt's da keine Diskussion drüber."

(W.G. Sebald. Auf ungeheuer dünnem Eis. Gespräche 1971 bis 2001. p. 103, from an interview with Ralph Schoch)

I'm starting to realise the stories people bring me are truer than the ones I find in books
funny how being a walking librarian taught me that
maybe that's why I never became a writer although I always dreamt of it and started being an artist instead
because it gives me the possibility to create the circumstances for people to meet
for myself to meet people
to find stories instead of telling them
because the best stories always tell themselves

my reckless grandfather grew cucumbers
I wonder if I look like him

I might read Goethe's The Metamorphosis of Plants (1790), his first major attempt to describe what he called in a letter to a friend "the truth about the how of the organism." Apparently it "demonstrates his ideas of transformation and interdependence, as well as the systematic use of imagination in scientific research"(Amazon).

Or maybe I won't read it and just grow cucumbers.

Geen opmerkingen:

Een reactie posten