Le Singe de Darwin

Princess Bari – drawing comparisons with Pina Bausch

Nada Cabani — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 00:13:13 +0000

My preview of Princess Bari, Eun-Me Ahn Company, can be read at STV- Edinburgh and also at Edinburgh International Festival website

Tagged: Dance, Dance theatre, Edinburgh International Festival, EIF, Eun-Me Ahn, Korea, Pina Bausch, Preview, Princess Bari, Review, Yeats

Review: Hiroshi Sugimoto: Lightning Fields and Photogenic Drawings

Nada Cabani — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 12:03:09 +0000

Read my review on Edinburgh International Festival

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Lightning Fields and Photogenic Drawings is at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art Two until 25 September.

Filed under: Reviews Tagged: Edinburgh International Festival, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Photogenic Drawings, Photography, Scottish Gallery of Modern Art, Sugimoto review, The Lightning Fields, Visual Arts, William Henry Fox Talbot

That revolution…

Nada Cabani — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 09:55:29 +0000

That revolution
With eyes glittering like a goat
With gestures of a plump insect
Make women pray and children cry

That revolution
Thirsty for blood
In a torn robe of a hermit
Scans the woods
For a thousand corpses
A thousand times

I thought corpses were taller
Bigger
Heavier

That revolution
Hostage to the dream of the Just
Is a mountain with two profiles

I thought corpses lived
Under polychromes roofs

When the night draws back her curtains
A monk and his twin shadow
The innocent and his murderer
Dig the earth for cubic spaces
To bury the dead

Filed under: Mosaics, Poetry

Sir John Soane – A Romantic at heart ?

Nada Cabani — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 00:21:00 +0000

My first encounter with Sir John Soane‘s work was in 2001 on a visit to Lincoln Inns, London. My life-long passion for the long eighteenth century was further enriched by this ‘encounter’ and I became fascinated with Soane the man. Was he a Romantic, as his tastes and temperament indicate, or was he an Enlightenment product par excellence? How can one do justice to the magnitude of the public and private aspects of his architecture and career? How can one contrast the truly exquisite tension between his most remarkable architectural work (Bank of England, Tyringham) and his ‘domestic’ interiors (Lincoln Inns)?

Soane devoted his life single-mindedly to architecture and was in his time England’s most eminent architect, mixing with the rich and famous. His style was unique for although he used neo-classical forms, he was at heart a great Romantic. Indeed, at the centre of Soane’s style is the bubbling tension, an anti-clockwise violent rotation if you like, pulling at opposite ends his empirical Enlightenment mind against his Romantic inclination, namely a fascination with the picturesque, the Gothic and the sublime. At the centre of this tension are Soane’s private life and lectures, his architectural monuments (the public side), and Lincoln Inn Fields (the public and private).

It is almost impossible to fragment his work and career in “departments” since his creative work, career and personal life are closely interwoven. But a look at Gandy’s ‘Public and Private Buildings’ (see photo –>) gives us a good idea of Soane’s fertile creativity, as well as an insight into the fine balance between the private and public aspects of his work. Gandy’s painting is bluntly explicit in its hierarchical placements of Soane’s monuments: for example, the Bank of England façade is given a dominant place in the painting, so is Tyringham given full status on the right while its Doric tribune is illustrated in the centre of the picture. Gandy’s selection is an amazing mix of Soane’s public state buildings and domestic ‘work’, and reads like a visual C.V. Soane explicitly prompted Gandy to contrast the astylar façade of No 13 Lincoln Inns with the more traditional Tyringham’s Ionic portico. This contrast springs to mind two thoughts: firstly, Soane’s style linking his much beloved theory of the orders and the rules of proportions to particular forms and functions and secondly, his preoccupation with marketing his image and attracting new commissions.

From the early days of his career and soon after he won the gold medal travel grant (1776), Soane seemed eager to build a network of contacts. During his two years spell in Italy, Soane cultivated a circle of collectors such as Borgia, and went on to meet Piranesi. Piranesi was a passionate advocate of Roman classical architecture, and he gave Soane four of his engravings that later found place in Lincoln’s Inn Fields (in the Breakfast Parlour). The network of contacts he built in Italy helped him obtain commissions on his return to England in 1780 and soon he counted among his clients and friends Samuel Bosanquet, director of the Bank of England. This friendship was to be instrumental eight years later when Soane landed the job that was to be the breakthrough of his career: overseeing the rebuilding and extension of the Bank. However, Soane grew increasingly frustrated by rivals such as James Wyatt who beat him to a series of appointments relating to the Palace of Westminster. Soane’s lobbying to secure contracts was not strictly transparent: he tended to lobby influential clients “through the back door” . This twisted behaviour came back to haunt him when Robert Smirke won the commission and rebuilt the Covent Garden Opera House. On his lecture to the Academy delivered in 1810, Soane turned his anger at Smirke and Dance and was duly and democratically- through a vote- prohibited (and professors who came after him) from criticizing the work of living colleagues. Indeed, his opaque and resentful character alienated his old friend Turner and even Soane’s two sons. Contrast this to Soane’s ability to have excellent relationships with his clients, overcoming difficult challenges with regards to their needs and dealing with the complexity of building work and accountability. He also had a positive relationship with the builders and craftsmen he employed, earning their trust and loyalty. It can therefore be argued that there was indeed a clear contrast between the public and private aspects of his career: Soane the Enlightened, craving self-improvement and dealing with clients and contractors in a constructive, rational manner and Soane the Romantic, ranting at rivals and indulging into spleen and victimhood.

This contrast is replicated in Soane’s architectural style. His main stylistic concern oscillates between two aspects: balancing the basic conventions of orders (classicism/Enlightenment) against the ‘character’ of the buildings (Romantic). Influenced by Blondel, he maintained that a building with a ‘character’ had qualities of individuality, was true to itself and did not pretend to be something different. Soane’s the Romantic is evident in some of his Royal Academy lectures, as well as in his collection of books; we know that he filled notebooks with annotations and included his own translations from the French. Furthermore, Soane maintained contradictory views, ranging from Neoclassicism to the picturesque and the Romantic. Equally, Soane the ‘Enlightened’ owned the ‘Encyclopedie’ in 33 volumes and accepted the philosophes’ view that a successful architect must be an expert in many fields. His Enlightenment beliefs were apparent in his lectures: here we see him stressing the importance of reason in architecture and trying to explain the architectural ornament by using the ‘logic’ explanation as to its origins. Indeed, his lectures tried to decipher his complex architectural mind, but often fell into the trap of criticizing others (as with his criticism of Chelsea Hospital). Perhaps, after all, his lectures were of a limited value in themselves to understanding his architecture; note the similarities of his negative ranting with that of Rousseau. Soane responded equally to Rousseau’s emotional empathy with nature as well as to his paranoia .This is certainly visible in Soane’s ‘Crude Hints […]’ .Here, in the best Romantic fashion, Soane portrays his house as a ruin and portrays himself (in the third person) as “…but he went on from a pure love to promote his interests of Art, until at last he had raised a nest of wasps about him sufficient to sting the strongest man to death…” [Soane] . Pure Romantic vintage! Also, Soane seemed to have many Napoleonic relics (all at Lincoln’s fields): a case for Napoleon’s pistol and a print by Gerard in the Breakfast Parlour, a full bust of Napoleon in the Dining Room which raises interesting questions: could it be that Soane identified himself with Napoleon the self-made man and his rise of talent and vision? Or is it simply that Napoleon’s relics had a buoyant market at the time, more to impress Soane’s potential clients/visitors?

Soane designed Tyringham for William Praed, a banker connected to the Prime Minister’s family, the Pitts. The commission is an indication of the ‘aristocracy’ circle Soane moved in. Tyringham had all the hallmarks of Soane’s planning style: from the giant order of Ionic columns to the entrance hall’s Doric columns with the full entablature of designs and cornice: the vaulting spatial sequences and ornamental simplification are all present, as they will later be in 12-14 Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Soane had the knack to transform features of classical design into abstract patterns of lines, as in his drawings of the Bank of England.

Whether a pure innovative ‘genius’ or a fact born out of necessity when remodelling old houses, Soane’s inventive top-lighting was another of his genial trademarks and was used to perfection in both Tyringham and Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Perhaps a great contrast to his public and private architecture can be found in the latter: the abode was to serve three functions: a family home, an architect’s workshop and office and a storage and display mini-museum The museum was to be initially ‘shifted’ to Pitzhanger Manor that Soane bought in 1800 for £4500 , for he was now a wealthy man. He fronted the Manor with a portico of Ionic columns with the distinct and unusual entablatures ejecting from the wall. Classical (Roman) architecture was prominent in his style here, reminiscent of his earlier Bank of England’s Lothbury Arch, inspired by the Arch of Constantine in Rome. Here Soane was at his Enlightenment-best style: inspired by the classics and developing his style based in the empirical tradition’s approach to design. Contrast this to his picturesque interiors such as Monk’s parlour at Lincoln ‘s Inn Fields, design and contents both of which are picturesque and Gothic.

Another interesting contrast point is the contradiction between his theoretical position and his practice: he created the picturesque ruins at Pitzhanger Manor and did the same at Lincoln’s Inn Fields and was an avid collector of Gothic fragments. Soane’s friendship with both Turner and Fuseli as perhaps a Romantic influence on Soane. Soane was certainly an embodiment of the shift from Enlightenment era to that of the Romantics, and this is clearly illustrated in his architectural style moving on two parallels and simultaneous tracks. For example, Soane’s desire to echo glories of Ancient Rome by constructing great projects (the Senate Buildings, in his students days) go hand in hand with his search to rationalize the classical language of architecture while believing in the unique character of each of his buildings. As a classicist, he emulated the architecture of Rome, Greece and the Renaissance and looked down (in theory) on the Gothic style as an inferior phase in the history of architecture. And yet, with equal conviction and gusto, he resisted the Greek Revival fashion of the times since he believed that the liberal copying of forms was inappropriate in the design of secular domestic buildings (in practice). Here Blondel’s influence is visible, and Soane seem to have followed ‘the principle of convenance’: there are no set rules that must be taken from antiquity per se, and the architect’s common sense should prevail when designing contemporary buildings. Soane took this even further, believing passionately in the character of buildings, a romantic notion of individuality.

There was never anything obvious about Sir John Soane’s style and architecture, from his handling of space and light to the collector-mania side of his work. He was innovative in using the principal tools available to architects of the time, and he was a master at creating subtle and unexpected effects in the interiors of his buildings. His style was so original, personal and Romantic that he became a hard act to follow, and had no close followers. As we have seen, the contrast between his public and private work and career was at times interwoven, and often overlapped. His legacy must be how he shifted architecture to new ‘modern’ heights, catching the shift between the Enlightenment and Romanticism: torn between neo-classicism and the philosophes’ intake on Art on the one hand, and a reluctant Romantic on the other. If this had been a battle, the odds will certainly be on Romanticism winning the day.

(I have included where possible links instead of footnotes/biblio. as there are too many to list here. Was also unable to find pictures of Soane’s drawings online to include in this post. See Sir John Soane’s Museum for a list of publications/catalogues and take their virtual tour of the museum.)

Filed under: Mosaics Tagged: 18th Century, Architecture, Covent Garden Opera House, Fuseli, Gandy, Gothic, James Wyatt, John Soane, Lincoln's Inn Fields, Piranesi, Romanticism, Rousseau, Royal Academy, Royal Academy lectures, Sir John Soane's Museum, The Enlightenment, Turner, Tyringham

People in boxes- Le singe is off to Paris

Nada Cabani — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 08:57:00 +0000

Monkey: Why do people live in boxes?
Woman: Do they?
Monkey: They do, they do, look, see that man there?
Woman: I see nothing
Monkey: He has a scar on his face
Woman: The box is scarred, but I see no man inside it!
Monkey: Look, he’s bending now, he’s picking up a banana skin off the floor!
Woman: Oh that! That’s just a frame, the silhouette of a man..
Monkey: Why do people live in boxes?
Woman: Only their silhouettes do, come on monkey, let’s swing to the next tree.
Monkey: Wait! The man is rubbing the banana skin on his scars! Why do people rub banana skins on their scars?
Woman: Because silhouettes want to be real, so they sting themselves, now and then, so that they can pretend to be real. Come along now, let’s swing to the next tree, we have a new book to write, and we’re starting in Paris, rue Chanez, at Porte d’Auteuil.

Filed under: Fiction, Philosophy milkshakes Tagged: Fiction, Philosophy milkshakes

Was Goethe’s Faust ‘modern’?

Nada Cabani — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 23:46:00 +0000

From its conception to its reception, Goethe’s Faust was sixty years in the making. A tall order then for Faust (the character) to mirror the intellectual currents of the time, namely Christianity, Classicism, Sturm und Drang, Enlightenment, Romanticism and German cultural nationalism. Yes, the list is long, so are the six decades that marked a profound change in Germany; what with the transformation of philosophy and literature by the Kantian revolution and the establishment of the European movement of Romanticism. Was Faust in synchrony with Goethe’s age? In other words, was Faust the character, Romantic? Was he Christian, or Gothic? Was he Kantian? In sum, was he ‘modern’? I will argue that indeed Faust illuminates the intellectual vogue of the time while simultaneously reflecting the complexity and often overlapping popular impulses of Goethe’s (long) age.

Faust’s legend began in the Reformation (first published in 1587) and inspired countless interpretations in the 1770’s. But it was Goethe’s Faust that embodied the typical reaction of the early nineteen-century to the Enlightenment movement. His characterization reanimated the Romantic theme for the Sturm und Drang movement; this was the movement that rebelled against convention and central to it was the emphasis on ‘the’ individual.
Long before Goethe’s publication of Faust, Lessing (1729-81) had, in 1759, drafted the first dramatization of Faust in which the character is not damned. Indeed, the 1770’s transformed the Faust legend from a character that is punished and damned for his pursuit of intellectual ‘truth’, to one that embodies a defiant cult figure and saved by his intellectual pursuit. Faust undergoes a metamorphosis at the hands of Goethe, thus reflecting the Strum und Drang movement of the defiant cult figure. And Goethe goes further.
As an individual bent upon self-realization, Goethe’s Faust wants to grasp his own destiny and hence the paradox: he is caught up in a devil’s bargain, and at the same time, he refuses to delegate the ‘terms’ to Mephistopheles. In the pact with the latter, Faust sets the terms and conditions – if you wish- of the deal: ‘ If ever, as Time flows by us, I should say:[…]’ (lines 351-7). Here the characterization reflects not only the Strum und Drang defiance, but also the Kantian theory of will. In other words, the character reflects the ‘modern’ Kantian doctrine, that of the individual determining outcomes. Indeed, Faust goes on to say: “Let us Plunge into Passion’s hectic dance,/balanced upon the rolling wave of Chance,/where pain is mixed with pleasure, failure with success:/no man can be in action and rest./” (lines 385-390). Here Faust not only steers his own destiny, but mingles Kantian self-determination with that other ‘modern’ intellectual current, Romanticism. Certainly the imagery and metaphors echo Romantic symbolism: Faust’s experience is individual, yet this same experience ultimately must communicate a unified, spiritual reality. In other words, reality (the infinite) manifests itself via the symbol (the finite). Faust’s characterisation therefore, particularly in both the Gothic setting of his study and the ‘sublime’ apparition of Mephistopheles, illuminates the Romantic current of Goethe’s time.

Equally, Faust’s characterisation mirrors another mood of the time, namely the European chattering classes’ realisation of the limitations of the Enlightenment movement: to Faust, knowledge is a burden since it is external to him, and therefore a ‘valueless inheritance’ (line 40). It is worth noting that at the heart of the Enlightenment project lies the illumination of the human mind by rational enquiry, notably knowledge. Indeed the externality of this knowledge is crucial, since it informs empiricism – central to the Enlightenment- thus defining the human mind at birth as a blank slate or tabula rasa. Faust is portrayed as a man who is almost overwhelmed by this knowledge, a man in acute agitation, in conflict between ‘Two Souls’ (line 137): on the one hand, he’s confronting the limitation of his life (sensual, internal, Romantic) and on the other hand, the aspirations for ‘purity of mind’ (Line 141) (rational, external, Enlightened).

Faust is presented as an intellectual scholar and yet, we find him devoured by intense emotion and gasping for some understanding of ‘ the force that binds all nature’s energies’ (line 22). Goethe’s Faust indeed captures, what I would call, the contemporary intellectual schizophrenia. Here we have a characterization of the Romantic Movement, the rebellious and immature child of that happy-go-lucky parent, the Enlightenment. It is almost as if we can hear it, through Faust, developing its tantrum: I differ, I rebel, I accuse and yet, I want to know everything but it’s impossible to know everything (not by the means you showed me anyway, dear parent) ‘…I shall be forced to acknowledge, once again/not one desire has been fulfilled-not one.’ (lines 269-70). Knowledge for Faust is no longer gained from the outside (he concludes that despite seeking knowledge he knew nothing) but from within the self. Seeking of the truth is an internal, organic process (Romantic) as opposed to external, mechanic one (Enlightenment). Faust will not rely on reason alone. Furthermore, in the opening lines of Scene I, Faust challenges directly the Enlightenment’s concept of ‘knowledge’ leading to the ‘truth’ and happiness for mankind: ‘I cannot boast that what I know is right;/ I cannot boast that my teaching will ever find/ a way to improve or to convert Mankind/’ (lines 14-16). (Robert Owen beware: Goethe’s Faust is not the production you want imported to New Lanark…)

It is interesting to note how Goethe deviates from Enlightenment’s ‘rules’ of drama (inspired by the Classics) and how, instead, he uses ‘Romantic irony’- the audience realises that the play is an illusion – Faust the character illuminates on the one hand the contemporary Strum und Drang’s rebellion against French neo-classical theatrical genre and therefore irremediably takes on a Romantic characterization.

When Gretchen asks Faust if he believes in God, he replies: ‘Who can dare name God,/and say ‘He does exist’?/ Or what sane man resist/ the feeling. ‘He does not’?/’ (lines 20-23). Faust then, in the Romantic tradition of the era, stretches the question out of its doctrinal essence. He goes on to say ‘Open your generous heart, and let it be/ flooded with nameless ecstasy –/ then call it what you will- […]/ Feeling is all.’ (Lines 33-38). Here again Goethe relies on the ‘feeling’ of the sublime – a feeling of infinity within the finite- and Faust’s ‘conviction of divinity in nature’ has its roots in Spinoza’s definition of God as present in everything. Spinoza (1632-77), we note, lived a century before Goethe. So can it be argued that the characterization of Faust was not exclusive to the intellectual currents of the time? Spinoza’s philosophy was certainly endorsed by some of Goethe’s contemporaries, but by no means universally so.

Another strong characteristic of Faust the Romantic is demonstrated in Goethe’s use of the sublime, as in Scene 20, ‘Walpurgis Night’. Note the verses/description of the surroundings used by Faust (he and Mephistopheles are travelling through the Harz mountains) ‘…where the foaming cataract falls in spray…’ (Line 9) and ‘…The storm-witch hurtles howling through the air:/ she beats down savagely on the back of my neck.’ (Lines 33-34). The sublime is illustrated at its best with the chorus of witches, warlocks and ‘voices from below’ that pepper the scene. The setting of the scene (Harz mountains) touches on German folklore.

Which leads us on to a more ambiguous area: did Faust reflect that other current of Goethe’s time, namely German cultural nationalism? Briefly (as elaborating on this requires another discussion altogether), Faust was a Germanic legend that was, at the hands of Goethe, developed into a different and radicalized version. Goethe’s Germany was not really one nation, but fragmented, and Weimar was a hotbed of ideas and intellectual creativity. Goethe was greatly influenced by Herder’s promotion of European (and German) folk-song heritage and Faust the character was probably very much a product of this vogue, not German cultural nationalism as we would understand it today (e.g. Nazism), but nationalism as in a ‘dreamt-of’ Germany that was not geographically fragmented but united in the wealth of its folk-heritage.

Faust the character did indeed reflect the times, in particular German Romanticism, however, it is not that straightforward, since central to the Faust character is the denouement in Faust part II: here we have an almost mystical solution, and wait for this, even a setting in the ‘Classics’ themes. It is worth remembering that the Romantics, unlike their predecessors, the Enlightened, abhorred denouements, rational or otherwise, and thrived on the perpetual dramatization of internal convulsions of the ‘soul’ or the ‘inner’ (emotion) versus the ‘external’ (knowledge by rational enquiry). And this is where the complexity of the Faust characterization at its best illuminates Goethe’s age: it mirrors the complex, implicit and intangible conflict between Romanticism and the bastardisation of post-Enlightenment/early Romantic project(s) mingling the Classics with the sublime.

And yes Faust was ‘modern’; in as far as he reflected the ‘complex mix’ of contemporary Germany. For example, Christianity for Faust belonged to the past; however, he did not substitute this to some passive contemplation of beauty. He feels one with ‘modernity’ and yet he is at odds with it. It’s a paradox, really, that encapsulates the essence of modernity: Isn’t modernity, after all, individualistic and subjective (as was Faust)? Doesn’t it drive on life in a hectic, chaotic manner, unable to realize all the potentialities of itself (as did Faust)? In that respect, Goethe’s Faust was modern. He integrated or ‘synthesized’ the opposed elements of the time: philosophy and poetry, the Classical and Romantic imagination and reason (derived from high culture) and common sense (derived from popular culture). Faust did reflect the popular impulses of Goethe’s age, impulses that were as complex and interwoven as the overlapping intellectual currents of the time. A legend, perhaps, of modernity at its messiest.

This is the edition of Faust I’ve been reading: MacDonald, R.D (2002) Goethe, FAUST, Oberon Books

Filed under: Mosaics Tagged: Faust, Goethe, Kant, Lessing, Romantic Irony, Romanticism, Spinoza, Sturm und Drang, Tabula rasa, Weimar

Mind your Kant and that banana skin!

Nada Cabani — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:14:33 +0000

The man on the bench wants to be old and wise. The monkey in the tree eats a banana and watches the man get old, but not wise.

The man was not meant to be born

[legend-has-it-you-see!]

his mother was on her way to the abortion clinic [you-see?] when she slipped on a banana skin and broke her leg. She stayed horizontal for one hundred and eighty days, seven hours and fifty two seconds! Then she gave birth to a fool, horizontally!

[Now-you-see!-but-do-you-?-do-you-?-can-you-really-see?]

The man on the bench was, therefore, a fait-accompli and any fool will tell you that there is no wisdom to be found in a horizontal fait-accompli!

The monkey in the tree throws away the banana skin.

A woman below pushing a pram slips on the banana skin.

The fool on the bench doesn’t see the woman, the pram nor the banana skin!

[He-can’t-see-he-can’t-see-he-can’t-can’t-CAN'T!-O-Kant-can-you-see-what-a-cunt-that-fool-is-he-can’t-see-he-can’t-see-he-so-so-so-can't-see!]

Old, he is, we all agree! But wise? Oh that, he will never be!

Only banana skins are wise, thinks the monkey in the tree. So eat your banana but look and see for

[legend-has-it]

wisdom always minds its Kant, and watches out for other monkeys’ banana skins!

Filed under: Fiction, Philosophy milkshakes Tagged: Fiction, Fiction shorties, Hugo Rheinhold monkey, Monkey philosophy, Philosophy milkshakes

The Taxman in Kilt

Nada Cabani — Tue, 25 May 2010 20:19:04 +0000

The taxman in kilt has hairy legs, crooked teeth and no pants! He huffs and puffs and walks the Royal Mile , scares old ladies and babes in arms. He sees the banker squatting behind the tree, counting his gold with glee.

‘Tis a sparkling morning, Sir!’

‘Tis sparkling indeed!’ the banker says, ‘but alas, not for me! For all this glitter ain’t what it seems! ‘Tis not mine, ‘Tis not mine, ye better believe me!’

‘Aye, an then yer arse fell aff’

‘Tis not mine, ’tis not mine! Not enough here for tatties and neeps!’

The taxman in kilt huffs and puffs, and walks away from the tree. He sees the flower seller feeding her monkey:

‘ Oi! Ye cannae feed a monkey wi’oot tax! 50% per nut, that’ll be!’

Filed under: Fiction Tagged: Bankers, Bourgeois, capitalism, Fiction, Royal Mile, Tax the poor, Taxman in Kilt

Nakba

Nada Cabani — Sat, 15 May 2010 10:49:11 +0000

Dirty wars
Sweaty plasters
Fragments of cameras
Fragments on screens
Black on white
And white as time.

The camera in your eyes
The lenses which haunt us
Your words on our lips
Your breath pumping death
On olive trees
On limping bees
The motherland.

Our existence,
Yours, yours
Always yours!
We are the fragments
You, the flashing lights
We, black capricious shadows,
You, the white gestures of death.

We run away
We leave them there
The bloodied and occupied
The tortured and oppressed
In that mother of whores -
The motherland.

We slip and slide
Through the cursed instant
And down Made-in-U.S.A sandbags
As you pierce
As you capture
As you rape
That mother of black prophets-
The motherland.

Those seasons before you
And all those to come,
Accelerating the blows of white
And the white is now so white
So white, so white, so white.

The white now blinds us
In this capsule of aborted exile
Where nothing ever begins
Where you never end.

Filed under: Poetry Tagged: Israel, Israeli Occupation, Nakba, Occupation, Palestine, Poems

The Stench of Ethical Flesh

Nada Cabani — Sat, 08 May 2010 19:11:00 +0000

The man stirs his coffee anti-clockwise. He is a wealthy man.
The woman sharing his table stares at the man’s hand as he stirs his coffee, for the second time.
The man does not take sugar in his coffee but wealthy men stir unsweetened coffee, all the same. They like to do that.

The man and the woman sit together.
The woman and the man sit apart.
Together and apart, they sit, domesticated in freshly conditioned hair, united in the sagging of overfed western flesh, overfed on organic this and that, herbal remedies and mumbo jumbo water pills, mange-tout flown from Kenya and all that other, very ethical and vegetarian stuff. The man and the woman have no time to cast a vote at the elections, and nothing to revolt against. They give money to Oxfam and adopt all these goats for poor black babies in Africa. The man and the woman love black babies, the skinny ones, they love these the most. They buy goats and pay for trees to be planted, to save the world. The man and the woman have plenty of time to shop and buy more designers cups, so that they can sit together and stare with stiff eyes at unsweetened coffee being stirred in … designers cups.

The woman writing a book stops writing and looks at Karl Marx.

‘Does buying Fair Trade coffee makes drinking this coffee ethical and therefore…’
‘Ethical is the new opium of the people, or whatever you call opium, nowadays.’

The woman writing a book sees ripples of western fleshy ethical thighs dance in front of her eyes. The stench of ethical flesh increases and the woman’s monkey can bear it no more. Neither can Marx. Neither can the woman writing a book.

Filed under: Fiction, Mosaics Tagged: africa, capitalism, charity, ethical, Fair Trade, Marx, oxfam