Theodor Storm

Crying over centrifuges

Dr. House: "You can’t be that good a person and well adjusted.”

Cameron: “Why?”

House: “Because you wind up crying over centrifuges.”

Making woopie

 

Pssst!

Lo que tenemos, lo que teníamos,
Lo que nosotros - -
Una mañana todo se fue.

Sorge

Kehre nicht in diesem Kreise

Neu und immer neu zurück!
Laß, o laß mir meine Weise,
Gönn’, o gönne mir mein Glück!

Soll ich fliehen? Soll ich’s fassen?
Nun gezweifelt ist genug.
Willst du mich nicht glücklich lassen,
Sorge, nun so mach mich klug.

Goethe

La pantera

Su mirada, cansada de ver pasar
las rejas, ya no retiene nada más.
Cree que el mundo está hecho
de miles de rejas y, más allá, la nada.

Con su caminar blando, pasos flexibles y fuertes,
gira en redondo en un círculo estrecho;
al igual que una danza de fuerzas en torno a un centro
en el que, alerta, reside una voluntad imponente.

Algunas veces, se alza el telón de sus párpados,
mudo. Una imagen viaja hacia dentro,
recorre la calma en tensión de sus miembros
y, cuando cae en su corazón, se funde y desvanece.

Rainer María Rilke

A fortunate man

"A man or a woman who is sobbing reminds one of a child, but in the most disturbing way . This is partly because of the particular social convention which discourages adults (and particularly men) from breaking into tears but permits children to do so. Yet this is by no means the whole explanation. There is a physical resemblance between a sobbing figure and a child. The 'bearing ' of the adult falls away and his movements are limited to certain very primitive ones. The centre of the body once again seem s to be the mouth: as though the mouth were simultaneously the place of pain and the only way by which consolation might be taken in. There is a loss of the control of the hands which again can only clench or paw. The whole body tends towards a foetal position . There are good physiological and psychological reasons for all this: but we can observe the similarity without knowing them. And why is the similarity so disturbing? Once more I believe the explanation goes further than our sense of convention or compassion. In some way the similarity, once established, is brutally denied . The sobbing man is not like a child. The child cries to protest . The man cries to himself. It may even be that by crying again like a child he somehow believes that he will regain the ability to recover like a child. Yet that i s impossible." 

From John Berger's "A fortunate man", a book for a fortunate reader.