A PLACE FOR SIDEWAYS TRAINS OF THOUGHT
When beginning as an interpreter many years ago , I was reminded that “Ivory Coast” was a name to be avoided as the authorities of that state insisted on it always being called by the French name Côte d’Ivoire. 2.Côte d’Ivoire is now a rather strange name since the ivory trade is prohibited. 3. A... Continue Reading →
In our universe, Genoa ceded the island of Corsica to France in 1768. Napoleone Buonaparte was thus born in 1769 as a subject of the King of France. (Later he changed his name to Napoleon Bonaparte to make it sound more French). Napoleon was sent to a French military academy, graduated as an artillery... Continue Reading →
A poem with instructions on how to cook memories
Berlin, Altes Museum, Egyptian Section
(listen to the poem here) Sometimes arriving time-zonked, tweedle-kneed and nearly dumb in Frankfurt or in London or in some other airport where people seem to have been stranded many months ago on strangely molten furniture, I stumble into a counter which claims that it provides espresso. As I go grimly inching up the North... Continue Reading →
The last time I went to Istanbul I had supper at Çiya Sofrasi, a restaurant which is by now famous (a long article about it appeared in the New Yorker and it has also been mentioned by the New York Times). It serves traditional food from distant Turkish provinces which is so different from the standard fare of Istanbul that the... Continue Reading →
I had bought lots of vegetables to make minestrone tonight but then I came across this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpfYt7vRHuY So now I have got my tools out and am making my own orchestra. One can always cook the vegetables afterwards (and maybe the soup will taste better after you have played some Haydn or Mozart -... Continue Reading →
(Listen to the poem here) First buy a ring cake, which you will not eat. A chance to buy a flavour you don't like. Cut out the middle hole, be small and try to take forever. Think that a mouse is lapping up Sumida river. Discard the cake, carry the hole, use all your fifty... Continue Reading →
Unfortunately, I know next to nothing about Vietnam and even less about Vietnamese music, but I have been wanting to share my appreciation of Huong Thanh ever since I heard her cd Mangustao. In it she blends Vietnamese music with jazz in a way which joins hands surprisingly. There is a lilt in her singing which reminds me of... Continue Reading →
The Polish science-fiction writer Stanislav Lem once set a story in a world in which the energy of children running about and playing was harnessed for power production. As I walk round in Rome in Summer, I think about that whenever I am knocked off the pavement by blasts of hot air issuing from air-conditioned buildings. I suppose that super-heating pedestrians... Continue Reading →