v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

Susanne Simonson

Susanne Simonson - All things unsaid

Brasov center

Vallejo Nocturno 2007- Brasov walkthru

From Claudio Magris' Danube:

"The Black Church in Kronstadt (now called Brasov), the ancient walls of which call to mind Luther's hymn "Almighty fortress is our God", is a fortress of German faith and clarity, standing like a bulwark against the swarming and intermingling of which Cignani's Jove is the polymorphous god. Inside the church there is a tomb dated 11647. The inscription reads I know and believe." The statue of a warrior, in full armour, helmet, gorget and all, and great mustaches, is reminiscent of Durer's Knight, who proceeds straight along the path of life, yielding neither to the fear of Death nor to the gelatinous flatteries of the Devil.

Like the school opposite the church, called Honterus, and the monument to Honterus himself, this German ethic is profoundly Protestant, with the sobriety, the straightforwardness and the toughness of the Reformation. Thanks to these keen, tenacious virtues the Germans have been the Romans of Mitteleuropa, and created a single civilization out of a melting-pot of diverse races. The splendid Turkish carpets in the Black Church, bearing witness to the Ottoman presence in Transylvania, speak of a different faith, but also one that was contrary to any sloppy ambivalence in its complete and utter abandonment to Allah, the one and only conqueror."

Restplace

Vallejo Nocturno 2007- Where we stayed

So we went to this villa outside of Brasov and overlooking the valley where it sits. At night I couldn't tell the specifics but in the morning this is what I saw.

Near Brasov at Night

Vallejo Nocturno 2006 - Nitetime in the Romania

After a big week of work from 8am to 2am just about every night that included finalizing presentation after midnite on most, we took from Bucharest to Brasov with dinner in the sking country above Brasov at a famous Romanian restaurant-it was cold and snowing but the change of pace was welcomed. . .

Nicky Hoberman

Nicky Hoberman - Think Pink

Reed Anderson

Reed Anderson - Phil Ross Private Rainbow

Yesterday(s)

Vallejo Nocturno 2007-Paris lite

Yesterday, I took about 6 hour walk in Paris. I arrived from the airport at 2pm in the afternoon on the train. I rushed up to my room and packed things in their place. I was staying at my first chain hotel in Paris at Les Halles (Ley Als). Outside was an incredible day after coming from the bitter Toronto cold and the flurries of D.C. People were all over the place and I had but limited time to catch those very same sights I had taken pixs of the many times I've been in this wonderful city. So off I went first to the Pompideau Center, then Hotel Deville, Notre Dame, the Seine, The Pantheon, the Sorbonne, and of course Luxembourg Gardens. On the way back I cought a crepe next to the dimning light by Notre Dame. Back at the hotel I was limping and feeling very out of it-tomorrow I said I'll catch that tower down the road. But work overtook everything and now I fly to Bucharest in the early morning. C'est la vie.

A Sunday in Paris

Vallejo Nocturno 2007 -Day in Pariside

Convincing arguments

From The Guardian, a profile on historian Tony Judt:

Anti-Zionism has, like Zionism itself, a long and complicated history. 'The thing that we tend to forget,' Judt explains, 'is that until the Second World War, Zionism was a minority taste even within Jewish political organisations. The main body of European Jews was either apolitical or integrated, and voting within the existing countries they lived in. So to be anti-Zionist, at least until the late 1930s, was to be lined up with most Jews. It would make no sense to think of it as anti-Semitic.

'After the Second World War, for a fairly brief period - from let's say 1945 to about 1953 - the overwhelming majority of Jews who were politically thinking were Zionists, either actively or sympathetically, for the rather obvious reason that Israel was the only hope for Jewish survivors. But then many of them, like Hannah Arendt or Arthur Koestler, both of whom were Zionists at various points, took their distance, on the grounds that it was already clear to them that Israel was going to become the kind of state that as a cosmopolitan Jew they couldn't identify with.

'Ever since then, there has been an unbroken tradition of non-Israeli Jews who regard Israel as either unrelated to their own identity or something of which they sometimes approve, sometimes disapprove, sometimes totally dislike. This range of opinion is not new,' Judt concludes. 'The only thing that's new - and it's a product of the post-Sixties - is the insistence that it's anti-Semitic.'

Judt tells a story about an Israeli journalist who was in Washington in the 1960s. 'The Israeli ambassador was retiring, and the journalist asked him what he thought was his biggest achievement. The ambassador said: "I've succeeded in beginning to convince Americans that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism." There has been a progressive emergence of a conflation,' Judt explains. 'It didn't just happen naturally. And it was pushed quite actively in the Seventies and Eighties, to the point at which it became so normal in this country that it was for a while the default assumption. It's really only in the last five to eight years that it's started to be questioned.'

The actions of very pro-Israel Jewish organisations - for instance, making carefully placed phone calls relating to certain public speakers - are, Judt believes, now born of panic rather than confidence.

'They've lost control of the debate,' he says. 'For a long time all they had to deal with were people like Norman Finkelstein or Noam Chomsky, who they could dismiss as loonies of the left. Now they're having to face, for want of a better cliché, the mainstream: people like me who have a fairly long established record of being Social Democrats (in the European sense) and certainly not on the crazy left on most issues, saying very critical things about Israel. They're not used to that, so their initial response has been to silence people if they could, and their second response has been to ratchet up the anti-Semitic charge.' Judt thinks it's telling that the New York Times 'is willing to report these issues and let reporters quote both sides. In the past, you would have had silence.'

Alfredo Bryce Echenique

Fragment from Alfredo Bryce:

LAS NOTAS QUE DUERMEN EN LAS CUERDAS (fragmento)

" El centro de Lima estaba lleno de colegios de mujeres, pero Manolo tenía sus preferencias. Casi todos los días, se paraba en la esquina del mismo colegio, y esperaba la salida de las muchachas como un acusado espera su sentencia. Sentía los latidos de su corazón, y sentía que el pecho se le oprimía, y que las manos se le helaban. Era más una tortura que un placer, pero no podía vivir sin ello. Esperaba esos uniformes azules, esos cuellos blancos y almidonados, donde para él, se concentraba toda la bondad humana. Esos zapatos, casi de hombres, eran, sin embargo, tan pequeños, que lo hacían sentirse muy hombre. Estaba dispuesto a protegerlas a todas, a amarlas a todas, pero no sabía cómo. Esas colegialas que ocultaban sus cabellos bajo un gracioso gorro azul, eran dueñas de su destino. Se moría de frío: ya iba a sonar el timbre. Y cuando sonara, sería como siempre: se quedaría estático, casi paralizado, perdería la voz, las vería aparecer sin poder hacer nada por detener todo eso, y luego, en un supremo esfuerzo, se lanzaría entre ellas, con la mirada fija en la próxima esquina, el cuello tieso, un grito ahogado en la garganta, y una obsesión: alejarse lo suficiente para no ver más, para no sentir más, para descansar, casi para morir.
(...)
Había algo en la atmósfera que lo hacía sentirse nuevamente como en la iglesia. Le parecía que tenía algo que decir. Algo que decirle a alguna persona que no conocía; a muchas personas que no conocía. Escuchaba el estallido de los cohetes, y sentía deseos de salir a caminar. Hacia las tres de la madrugada continuaba su extraño paseo. Hacia las cuatro de la madrugada, un hombre quedó sorprendido, al cruzarse con un muchacho de unos quince años, que caminaba con el rostro bañado en lágrimas. "

from Literatura Peruana