“It is told of Sigismund, King of Rome, that when someone pointed out a grammatical mistake he had made in a speech, he answered, ‘I am King of Rome, and above all grammar.’ And he went down in history as Sigismund super-grammaticam. A marvelous symbol! Every man who knows how to say what he has
TagGoodbye
Goodbye (Mentally I am in the Former BCB Library Bathtub)
I’m writing my farewell post to readers of Die Bärliner not from Berlin, but from a country road in upstate New York. Already situated in a new environment, I’ve spent the last few weeks wondering how to wish the blog farewell. I’d almost psyched myself out of the whole thing until I curiously drove past
A Completely Precedented Goodbye For Unprecedented Times
I received an email from The New York Review of Books, though I do not remember signing up for their mailing list, advertising gifts for the Class of 2020. Enclosed in the email was a catalogue of thin silver bracelets with quotes from famous authors. The advertisement’s featured bracelet had a quote from Thoreau in a handwriting-like font that said: “Go confidently in the / direction of your dreams— / Live the life you’ve imagined.” I will not be buying one of these silver bracelets, nor have I learned, these past few months, how to bake sourdough.
Shifting Thresholds
Hopes and dreams trapped in objects: waiting to be unleashed, or ready to be discarded? Easier just to keep it all, stuff it in dresser drawers and cupboards, hide it under a duvet at the back of the linen closet, until one day, through some trick of fate, it ceases to be invisible again …