Without Lifting A Finger

D. had listened to F.’s report and absently ordered a glass of wine, even though it was just eleven o’clock, gulped it down with an equally absent air, ordered a second glass, and remarked that he was still pondering the useless problem of whether the law of identity A = A was correct, since it posited two identical A’s, while actually there could only be one A identical with itself, and anyway, applied to reality it was quite meaningless, since there was no self-identical person anywhere, because everyone was subject to time and was therefore, strictly speaking, a different person at every moment, which was why he, D., sometimes had the impression that he was a different person each morning, as if a different self had replaced his previous self and were using his brain and consequently his memory, making him all the more glad that he was a logician, for logic was beyond all reality and removed from every sort of existential mishap, and so he would like to respond to the story she had ...

“​‘You rightly wondered,’ he finally continued, ‘that I’m still living in a hotel. I didn’t want to confront the world. I wanted to deal with it skillfully, I’d almost say mechanically, but I didn’t want to suffer with it. I wanted to be superior to it, not lose my head, control it all like a technician. I looked at the murdered girl, and that was bearable; but when I stood in front of her parents, I suddenly couldn’t bear it any longer, I had to get away from that godforsaken house, and so I promised by my eternal soul that I would find the murderer—just to turn my back on those suffering people, and I never gave a moment’s thought to the fact that I couldn’t keep this promise because I was going to Jordan. And then I allowed the old indifference to rise up in me, Locher. That was so horrible. I didn’t fight for the peddler. I allowed everything to happen. I became my old impersonal self, “Nobody Home,” as some people call me. I slipped back into the calm, the superiority, the formali...

Turkeys @ Top of the World. Cambria CA. What could be more American, though I suppose you could argue they've got their holidays mixed up a bit.:) Happy Memorial Day!🎈 #rlswihart #topoftheworld #cambriacalifornia #wildturkeys #memorialday #redwhiteandblue #beachday #waveaflag #remembrance #nature #beauty #poetry #readmorepoetry2023 #ukraine 🇺🇦🎆

This case gave me a bad feeling; everything had somehow gone wrong; I didn’t know exactly how, but I felt it. I withdrew to my ‘boutique,’ as I called it, a smoke-filled little room next to my office. I ordered a bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape from a restaurant near the Sihl bridge, drank a few glasses. There was always an awful mess in that room, I won’t deny it, a jumble of books and files. I did that on principle, because in my opinion it’s everyone’s duty in this well-ordered land to maintain little islands of chaos, even if only in secret.

“To be honest,” Dr. H. began later, as we were approaching the Kerenz Pass—the road was icy again, and beneath us lay Lake Walen, glittering, cold, forbidding; also, the leaden weariness from the Medomin had come back, the memory of the smoky taste of the whiskey, the feeling of gliding along in an endless, meaningless dream—“to be honest, I have never thought highly of crime novels, and I rather regret that you, too, write them. It’s a waste of time. Though what you said in your lecture yesterday was worth hearing; since the politicians have shown themselves to be so criminally inept—and it takes one to know one, I’m a member of Parliament, as I’m sure you’re aware . . .” (I had no idea, I was listening to his voice as if from a great distance, barricaded behind my tiredness, but attentive, like an animal in its lair) “. . . People hope the police at least will know how to put the world in order, which strikes me as the most miserable thing you could possibly hope for. But unfortunate...

“We drove on. It was a strange day. Reality seemed to have sunk into an abyss. We drove along a high narrow ridge beneath low-lying clouds, as in the cabin of a funicular. The closest likeness I could think of was one of those old Chinese ink drawings, showing travelers moving along monotonously amid mountain peaks, clouds, and waterfalls. The boy huddled in the back seat and barely moved. All he had learned in the course of his short life was to distrust everybody and everything. He remembered nothing else. When the guardians of National Socialist culture bashed in his grandfather’s skull, he had been three years old; he had been seven when his father was hanged, and nine when his mother was gassed—a true child of the twentieth century.

Yellow-billed Magpies @ Los Olivos CA. Got only a few fleeting glimpses on Sunday (driving north) when the cherry stand was at the corner of Zaca Station. On the way home (yesterday) the stand was gone and a mischief of magpies (3 to 5) was there: playing in and around an oak tree, a shorn yellow field, the vineyards. Coulda been sunnier but I'll take what I got and visit Zaca Station every chance I can. Happy Hump Day and thanks for the tip @just.birdies.:) #rlswihart #losolivos #centralcoast #zacastation #magpiesofinstagram #yellowbilledmagpie #wheresthesun #nature #beauty #yellowthings #poetry #readmorepoetry2023 #ukraine 🇺🇦

Then, in the perfect stillness, hundreds of leaves detached themselves from their branches and came floating down, as though in answer to a mysterious command. They glided serenely through the clear air, and some of them fell on me. In that moment I saw the freedom, the boundless consolation of death. I made no decision, but I knew that I had the power to end my life if Helen should die, that I wouldn’t have to stay behind alone.

Blue Grosbeak (Male & Female) @ Fairview Park. Costa Mesa CA. TGIF & Enjoy your weekend. #rlswihart #costamesa #fairviewpark #grosbeaksofinstagram #bluegrosbeak #bluebirds #nature #tgif #weekend #beauty #poetry #readmorepoetry2023 #ukraine🇺🇦🎈 🐦

“Near the hotel I heard subdued voices and steps. Two SS men came out of a house door, pushing a man ahead of them into the street. I saw his face in the light of a street lamp. It was narrow and waxen, and a black trickle of blood ran down over his chin from one corner of his mouth. The crown of his head was bald, but there was a growth of dark hair on the sides. His eyes were wide open and full of horror such as I had not seen in years. Not a sound escaped him. The SS men pushed and pulled him impatiently. They were quiet about it. There was something muffled and eerie about the whole scene. The SS men cast furious, challenging glances at me as they passed, and the prisoner stared at me out of paralyzed eyes, making a gesture that seemed to be a plea for help; his lips moved, but not a sound came out. It was a scene as old as humankind: the minions of power, the victim, the eternal third, the onlooker, who doesn’t raise a finger in defense of the victim, who makes no attempt to set h...

This is the land of which it is said that the last war’s projectiles plow from the ground the projectiles of the war before the last.

Yellow-breasted Chat in Seal Beach CA. Lying low in a sea of wild mustard mostly, but comes up now and then to "chat" and check things out from his fave lookout. Happy Sunday.🌞 #rlswihart #sealbeach #socal #chatsofinstagram #yellowbreastedchat #yellowflowers #lyinglow #nature #beauty #poetry #readmorepoetry2023 #ukraine🇺🇦🎈

He picked up Anna’s old violin, which she had got out and had been fooling with a little because she wasn’t able to do any housework. She had spoken of this violin, which had been brought over by her father from Europe and which was the only relic of him she had. She had told me that it was supposed to be a fine one, and had talked once or twice about selling it; and now I was surprised to discover that it did bear Stradivari’s label and was at least one of the good imitations. Leo played on it a little old polka and started the overture to Poet and Peasant. Then he stopped and said, “I can’t remember it,”—and he and his family took their leave.