Dak'Art2016
Tuesday, 27
We are six sitting at the table. Dinner. We are eating Spaghetti mixed with some kind of minced meat. Like every evening. Stink fish, Peppe Soup or Butterfish, but always pasta added to the meal. Someone had to go out into the heavy rainfall to buy bread. Tapalapa. Rainy season. With six people sitting on a rectangular six-seated table you have an opposite. That is for sure. At the same time you know when looking into the face vis-à-vis that one of you guys will leave the table at first. You or your opposite. The one who leaves the table first will leave the opposite behind without an opposite. What might evoke a feeling of being abandoned. However, the advantage of the one left behind is that he or she can continue eating till China is to be seen clearly - the stomach filled to the limit. And, maybe the other day you are the one who will go first heading for further discernments within the daily routine and the course of the day. Tursday, 22.
should i be honest or should i pretend that i am very busy, no i am not. i am at my shop more or less doing nothing. feeling tired most of the time. sometimes reading, this or that. often just lying on my sofa thinking, musing, letting time pass. not waiting, but letting time pass till something pushes me to change my position. to do something, querying my mails, turning on music, but never big things like a work i could present to others. no art work, no writing a book nor am i about to sew a dress - no, just nothing. am fine with that. i don't feel guilty or have a bad conscience - as long as i don't disturb nobody. Monday, 19
i see the question mark mirroring in my eyes. i saw it, really. though no one else could detect it; after the teachings of optics the angle would be wrong. so how about the things we cannot share, because we cannot prove them - trust, believe, faith, confidence, reliance. a lot of expressions to emphasise what is physically given through our skins that touch the other and its flowing emotions are supposed to give an impression of unity. understanding and togetherness. in times of relationships taking place in internet people try to get unified by what in recent times was called telepathy and nowadays is named virtual reality produced by wide-band communication lines. an illusion, of which the longing for a sustain but depending on facilities of access can be fatal. the fierce and urgent wish of being connected to someone immediately but at the same time having to struggle with the demands of telecommunication industries is likely to lead to depressions. to say it personally and simply, at first hand you have to be fine with yourself, because in case a connection failed staying alone shouldn't be a problem. further, internet is strong and sooner or later you will get what you want. the world's health and continuity is inconceivable without computers and internet. Tuesday, 13
my writing is neither meant to reflect reality - for everybody who does not know it - nor is it an attempt of an objective view. it is always a mixture of observation and invention, whereby invention implies changing things that have been perceived by my eyes and stored in my mind into something that comes out to be words, which form a fictional situation. Monday, 12
Finally he took off his shoes in slow movements. All the long night - she was ironing till after eleven and eventually went to the tailor's shop to fetch her Tobaski dress - he had waited in the hope of walking her home after work, but she had decided for the other boy. I saw the disappointment in his eyes. Every evening he looks forward to being with her for while, just the short way to her father's compound. He loves her; he adores her big behind and strong breasts. Sometimes when she is changing in his dormitory he sneaks in to get a glimpse of her skin. "It doesn't matter what she wears" he once said to me. He knows her naked body. "In my eyes she's always the same girl", he added. She enjoys him as well when he watches her and mentally takes off her clothes. A youthful game to make their daily life a bit of exciting. Monday, 5
Men and women are different. We have different hormones and different sexual organs and different biological abilities - women can have babies, men cannot. Men have more testosterone and are, in general, physically stronger than women. There are slightly more women in the world - 52 per cent of the world's population is female but most of the positions of power and prestige are occupied by men. The late Kenyan Nobel peace laureate Wangari Maathi put it simply and well when she said, "The higher you go, the fewer women there are."
In the recent US-elections, we kept hearing of the Lilly Ledbetter law, and if we go beyond that nicely alliterative name, it was really about this: in the US, a man and a woman are doing the same job, with the same qualifications, and the man is paid more because he is a man.
So in a literal way, men rule the world. This made sense - a thousand years ago. Because human beings lived then in a world in which physical strength was the most important attribute for survival; the physically stronger person was more likely to lead. And men in general are physically stronger. (There are of course exceptions.) Today we live in a vastly different world. The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative. And there are no hormones for those attributes. A man is as likely as a woman to be intelligent, innovative, creative. We have evolved. But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much.
We should all be feminists, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2014 Thursday, 1
Don't kill my chicken, he's told me this morning... Fattoumata, Effo, Isha ...
We are six sitting at the table. Dinner. We are eating Spaghetti mixed with some kind of minced meat. Like every evening. Stink fish, Peppe Soup or Butterfish, but always pasta added to the meal. Someone had to go out into the heavy rainfall to buy bread. Tapalapa. Rainy season. With six people sitting on a rectangular six-seated table you have an opposite. That is for sure. At the same time you know when looking into the face vis-à-vis that one of you guys will leave the table at first. You or your opposite. The one who leaves the table first will leave the opposite behind without an opposite. What might evoke a feeling of being abandoned. However, the advantage of the one left behind is that he or she can continue eating till China is to be seen clearly - the stomach filled to the limit. And, maybe the other day you are the one who will go first heading for further discernments within the daily routine and the course of the day. Tursday, 22.
should i be honest or should i pretend that i am very busy, no i am not. i am at my shop more or less doing nothing. feeling tired most of the time. sometimes reading, this or that. often just lying on my sofa thinking, musing, letting time pass. not waiting, but letting time pass till something pushes me to change my position. to do something, querying my mails, turning on music, but never big things like a work i could present to others. no art work, no writing a book nor am i about to sew a dress - no, just nothing. am fine with that. i don't feel guilty or have a bad conscience - as long as i don't disturb nobody. Monday, 19
--- Butterfish + Fish ---
Friday, 16i see the question mark mirroring in my eyes. i saw it, really. though no one else could detect it; after the teachings of optics the angle would be wrong. so how about the things we cannot share, because we cannot prove them - trust, believe, faith, confidence, reliance. a lot of expressions to emphasise what is physically given through our skins that touch the other and its flowing emotions are supposed to give an impression of unity. understanding and togetherness. in times of relationships taking place in internet people try to get unified by what in recent times was called telepathy and nowadays is named virtual reality produced by wide-band communication lines. an illusion, of which the longing for a sustain but depending on facilities of access can be fatal. the fierce and urgent wish of being connected to someone immediately but at the same time having to struggle with the demands of telecommunication industries is likely to lead to depressions. to say it personally and simply, at first hand you have to be fine with yourself, because in case a connection failed staying alone shouldn't be a problem. further, internet is strong and sooner or later you will get what you want. the world's health and continuity is inconceivable without computers and internet. Tuesday, 13
my writing is neither meant to reflect reality - for everybody who does not know it - nor is it an attempt of an objective view. it is always a mixture of observation and invention, whereby invention implies changing things that have been perceived by my eyes and stored in my mind into something that comes out to be words, which form a fictional situation. Monday, 12
Finally he took off his shoes in slow movements. All the long night - she was ironing till after eleven and eventually went to the tailor's shop to fetch her Tobaski dress - he had waited in the hope of walking her home after work, but she had decided for the other boy. I saw the disappointment in his eyes. Every evening he looks forward to being with her for while, just the short way to her father's compound. He loves her; he adores her big behind and strong breasts. Sometimes when she is changing in his dormitory he sneaks in to get a glimpse of her skin. "It doesn't matter what she wears" he once said to me. He knows her naked body. "In my eyes she's always the same girl", he added. She enjoys him as well when he watches her and mentally takes off her clothes. A youthful game to make their daily life a bit of exciting. Monday, 5
Men and women are different. We have different hormones and different sexual organs and different biological abilities - women can have babies, men cannot. Men have more testosterone and are, in general, physically stronger than women. There are slightly more women in the world - 52 per cent of the world's population is female but most of the positions of power and prestige are occupied by men. The late Kenyan Nobel peace laureate Wangari Maathi put it simply and well when she said, "The higher you go, the fewer women there are."
In the recent US-elections, we kept hearing of the Lilly Ledbetter law, and if we go beyond that nicely alliterative name, it was really about this: in the US, a man and a woman are doing the same job, with the same qualifications, and the man is paid more because he is a man.
So in a literal way, men rule the world. This made sense - a thousand years ago. Because human beings lived then in a world in which physical strength was the most important attribute for survival; the physically stronger person was more likely to lead. And men in general are physically stronger. (There are of course exceptions.) Today we live in a vastly different world. The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative. And there are no hormones for those attributes. A man is as likely as a woman to be intelligent, innovative, creative. We have evolved. But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much.
We should all be feminists, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2014 Thursday, 1
Don't kill my chicken, he's told me this morning... Fattoumata, Effo, Isha ...