Without Lifting A Finger

Apparently Bruegel was the first to depict them on a broom and flying up a chimney (something I learned at Chateau de Chillon). [From WikiGallery: http://www.wikigallery.org/wiki/painting_115752/Pieter-the-Elder-Bruegel/St-James-the-Greater-at-Hermogenes-1565 ]

We arrived in Zurich late-afternoon on Monday, April 2. We were a short tram ride from the old town and the sites we wanted to see. Here are a few of the highlights.     A big slingshot near the parking lot (a stone's throw from the hotel) A dog fountain (also near the hotel) Zwingli's (and Celan's) Minster  The Stork The Stork The Storks

By the time we got through customs and got the rental car we had very little time to "investigate" between Stuttgart Airport and Zurich (our first big pitstop). The only mini-stop we made (other than a gas station near the German-Swiss border to buy the Swiss autobahn sticker) was Tubingen, and most of our Tubingen energy was spent in getting to and from Holderlin's Tower along the Neckar. Holderlin's Tower along the Neckar Holderlin Plaque  Holderlin Graffiti at the Museum Door

Knight, Death and the Devil, Albrecht Durer, 1513 , a photo by New Visions2010 on Flickr. From Durrenmatt's Suspicion :    "Knight's a goner," said the man in the blue work clothes, pressing the words out of his obliquely twisted mouth: "Knight's a goner, knight's a goner!"    Not until the worker had left the room and clumsily slammed the door behind him did the old man realize that he had been talking to a deaf mute. *** Also by Durer: "Witch Riding Backwards on a Goat":  [From WikiPaintings: http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/albrecht-durer/witch-riding-backwards-on-a-goat-1500 ] 

My sunrise service: a cold walk to Peets and Durrenmatt's Barlach Mysteries (I finished The Pledge in Montreux). Lots of "fodder" for the weeks to come (I didn't lose my camera this time, so I've got lots of pictures), but I'll start with two works from the great Albrecht Durer, which I came across on my trip: Knight, Death, and Devil (from Durrenmatt's Suspicion ) and Witch Riding Backwards on a Goat (one of many artworks alluded to in a special exhibit on Sorcery and Witches I saw at the Chateau de Chillon near Montreux).

If nothing turns sour, we'll leave early tomorrow morning for Stuttgart (via Atlanta). Once I'm on the plane I'll leave my Kindlized Beckett behind and crack a shiny new paper copy of Durrenmatt's The Pledge . Anyway, a few parting bullets from Beckett's "Texts for Nothing": Piers pricking his oxen o'er the plain, no, for at the end of the furrow, before turning to the next, he raised his eyes to the sky and said, Bright again too early let us be dupes, dupes of every time and tense palp your skull, seat of understanding He'll have served in the navy, perhaps under Jellicoe, while I was potting at the invader from behind a barrel of Guinness, with my arquebuse Yes, there are moments, like this moment, when I seem almost restored to the feasible. Then it goes, all goes, and I'm far again, with a far story again, I wait for me afar for my story to begin, to end, and again this voice cannot be mine. That's where I'd go, if I could ...

A fellow Szymborska admirer passed this one on to me. Perhaps not her best, but even mediocre Szymborska outshines most of the competition (though there is no competition). Some Like Poetry Some - thus not all. Not even the majority of all but the minority. Not counting schools, where one has to, and the poets themselves, there might be two people per thousand. Like - but one also likes chicken soup with noodles, one likes compliments and the color blue, one likes an old scarf, one likes having the upper hand, one likes stroking a dog. Poetry - but what is poetry. Many shaky answers have been given to this question. But I don't know and don't know and hold on to it like to a sustaining railing. [ Translated by Regina Grol ]