open libraries

«Sayat Nova — Open Library» aquarelle, 2013

In the sublime film by Serguei Paradjanov, Sayat Nova, also known as The Color of Pomegranates, there is a scene after a torrential rain, where the young poet Sayat Nova carries thick tomes of illustrated manuscripts onto the church rooftop and spreads their pages out to dry under the sun. For a few seconds, one hears the fluttering of sheets, centuries of work unlocked, rustling in the wind.

This is the image that comes to mind when I think of the late Aaron Swartz, this bright young man who had engaged himself with such conviction in the free circulation of knowledge, open access and the freedom of the Internet. He had helped organize the Internet Blackout of last January in protest of the SOPA/PIPA bills being considered in Congress, bills that would have led to increased censorship of the web. In the act that led to his unjust prosecution under a nebulous law, he had downloaded millions of scholarly articles from the digital library JSTOR with the intention of making them freely accessible to the public, especially the developing world. A treasure trove of a library, whose legacy, he believed, belonged to all mankind.

I feel his spirit hovering over us who believe, reminding us of the vigorous will and impatience to understand and to change the structures of the world we live in.

A Romantic Idea of Village and Country Life

«Romantic village life» 2012

In the winter, you could see its fairytale tower puffing out a ribbon of smoke from its little chimney. The last leaves fallen away from the surrounding trees, its faux half-timber façade stood visible upon a mound further up the street. It was the one house that appealed most to the romantic idea of a provincial life.

Some abodes in the village have wooden shutters painted pastel, not common in these parts; still others have rounded rosy roofs or roofs that slope steeply downward and then gently flare with charm; but this is no Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and the vast majority of homes here are an unremarkable collection of modern-day constructions one can find in any German suburbia.

So when evening falls, and the meadow is enveloped in shadow, I can peer out the window at the tower’s moonlit silhouette, and life in a village takes on sweet and poetic notes, like horses grazing under apple trees, like yoga in a farmhouse, like a one-track train station platform, like the only café in the village that doubles as tailor’s and delivery service and closes shop at noon on Saturdays. Like the bird sanctuary trail winding along the hill, the ringing church bells, the stream running behind the village hall.

But I won’t shed a tear leaving. That isn’t to say I have given up entirely on village life. Some villages have grannies who sit on public benches on the main square watching the world go by. Some have a warm summer street where all the dogs go for siestas. Some have cottages with bunches of hanging herbs. Some have old stone walls covered in brier. This village had none of those. Something important was lacking, but I won’t wait to find out what.

Onwards with the tramontane life and spring cleaning.

city of a dream

«Budapest», 2009

I first entered Budapest in winter, as the first snow fell upon the city. The night was silent and the lights glimmered as we took the cable car up the Buda hill, gazing through the gauzy snowflakes to the barges on the Danube and the illuminated spires of Parliament below.

In other countries, I had dreamt of the city, conjured its bridges and hills, its poets and failed revolutions, its language vibrating in the streets, an indecipherable stream that flowed invariably to you. So much that even the sight of the forlorn Keleti train station moved me, like the trace of your fingers.

Sometimes, Budapest does not live up to its surnom, Paris of the East. Oftentimes.
One passes the soot-blackened plaster peeling off its abandoned palaces. One walks under its tawdry neon signs, pieces of a dream post-1989. One boards its metro escalators crowded with commuters heading somewhere, plastic bag in hand. One visits its flats for rent and for sale— the sights are too sad to describe.

But during that slow ascent up the hill, the city was a sleeping beauty on the Danube. And the snow that fell softened her imperfections, quilted her in the aura of a dream.

Albrecht Dürer's dream vision

"In the year 1525, between Wednesday and Thursday after Whitsunday during the night, I saw this appearance in my sleep, how many great waters fell from heaven. The first struck the earth about four miles away from me with a terrific force, with tremendous clamor and clash, drowning the whole land. I was so sore afraid that I awoke from it before the other waters fell. And the waters which had fallen were very abundant. Some of them fell further away, some nearer, and they came down from a great height that they all seemed to fall with equal slowness. But when the first water, which hit the earth, was almost approaching, it fell with such swiftness, wind and roaring, that I was so frightened when I awoke that my whole body trembled and for a long while I could not come to myself. So when I arose in the morning, I painted above as I had seen it. God turn all things to the best."

Albrecht Dürer

Translated in A. Rosenthal, "Dürer’s dream of 1525," Burlington Magazine 69, August 1936.