distortion © Lilly Schwartz 2011

I think all the stress and sleepless nights of the last weeks and months are finally catching up with me. I’ve spent most of yesterday on my sofa, watching things, reading and relaxing. It made me realise how exhausted I really am. I’m glad that I can take some time off now and just take it easy for a while. Originally I wanted to go to tango last night, but then I felt that I couldn’t face cycling all the way there and back and dancing and dealing with people. I just wanted to stay on the sofa and stare blankly at a movie or series I’ve seen so many times that I don’t need my brain at all. Sometimes that’s necessary.

Overall I’ve probably overused my brain in the last few months, since I feel like mostly watching silly movies. At least I’ve found some mind-space to read some nice books. I just finished The Innocent by Ian McEwan and Letter to D by André Gorz. Although the former was slightly predictable in the plot the actual way of putting things in the end was just crazy. One chapter I read with the horrible feeling of not wanting to hear any of it, but then it was too gripping to not read it. It reminded me of reading Stephen King books where you’re torn between the horror of it all and the absolute necessity to carry on reading.

Letter to D is a short nice book, a declaration of love from Gorz to his terminally ill wife. Shortly after the book was published they committed suicide together because they could not imagine living without each other. Parts of the book make more sense if you know a thing or two about the intellectual history of France in the last century, but the main message is perfectly understandable without knowing any of the names mentioned. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and recommend it warmly.

“You’ve given me all of your life and all of you; I’d like to be able to give you all of me in the time we have left.” (André Gorz in Letter to D)

The Innocent however depends more on your personal preferences. If you don’t like to be confronted with the terrible abyss in which humans can pull you sometimes, then I recommend not to read it. However, if you don’t mind being surprised in the most awful way, then it’s worth picking up a copy, because it is exceptionally well written in my opinion.

“The imagination was even more brutal than life.” (Ian McEwan in The Innocent)

Yesterday’s picture is of a part of a postcard that I bought at the Bauhaus archive here in Berlin. I was playing with my macro converter and since I couldn’t quite get my idea to work I ended up with my two converters just lying on the postcard in weird angles. I quite like the outcome of this little experiment.