Skip to main content

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.


Ampelmännchen, Ich werde auf dich warten. Campbell Straße, December 2010.

The Christmas/New Year period has derailed my reading somewhat. Who knew that so much literary graft could be achieved on public transport and during lunch breaks through the week?

That said, I'm knee deep in Gert Hofmann's Luck, and should be finished in a few days. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. I think that much will depend on where he takes the tale...

Comments

Carola said…
Really amazing.

Kris, du und dein Ampelmännchen.

I remember that I registered in Blogger in November 2008 to comment to your first post with the Ampelmännchen.

For us Ampelmännchen is kult, too. Something positiv, left from the DDR. (It was not only in Ost-Berlin, all over East Germany).

I grew up close to the border on the west part (Zonenrandgebiet). And we were able to watch DDR TV. A figur in the childrens TV was Sandmännchen. I watched it. It is still present. Sandmännchen is giving sand in your eyes, so that you can sleep. Maybe you know.
smudgeon said…
Give me Amplemann (& Ampelfrau) over this nondescript stick figure any day.
Kris McCracken said…
Carola, Ampelmännchen has real character. I have seen snippets of Sandmännchen, he's a very odd fellow.

Me, Ampelfrau is trouble.

Popular posts from this blog

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.