Author: paulattinello
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Light and air
After an amazingly unproductive weekend – even for me (my excuses: last week was full of meetings, this week has too much student work that needs marking, some of which is good but much of which is distinctly disappointing) – I'm avoiding everything, and everyone, by looking through vast books of architecture. 1000 x European…
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Palermo Shooting
The title of Wim Wenders' 2008 film. Not very successful, widely regarded as pretentious and self-indulgent; and it's true that the script isn't subtle or surprising (who would have thought Death would be so talkative and sententious?). But this isn't a review… for real film people, it may be a failure; but for me it's…
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Anniversary
Yesterday (oops, missed it) was the third anniversary of this blog. 460 entries – that's about one entry every two-and-a-third days. Sorry I haven't been blogging lately… life has consisted of, on the one hand, scattered and rather disorganized external demands (students discovering that they need to do some work before the end of the…
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Boy band
Hmm, what a ruthlessly symbolic dream: sitting around with a bunch of charming, handsome, talented young men who have a (classical, I think) ensemble that has somehow become famous; I ask them to come perform, collaborate, work with us in the North, and they say no, politely, with regret – we'd love to, but we…
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Limitations; and, The Great German Novel
Even among these pleasant spring days, various small pleasant encounters, and the sense of positive direction I've developed in the past six months (related to Jung and analysis), I keep being made uneasily aware of limits, barriers, walls. A sense of shortened time, news of health concerns: will I really have to inject myself with…
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Christos anesti!
Greek – whether ancient or modern, two wildly different languages – is beautiful but so intricate, so incomprehensible: for someone like me who considers himself fairly familiar with a variety of Western European languages, it seems alien, unrelated. And yes, of course it's Indo-European – but from such a distant branch…. My mother's family, and…
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…
I am disoriented by the awareness of great chunks of time: time that is going by too quickly, time that is long gone, time that is frozen. Why, for instance, in these sleepless early mornings, should I remember the amazingly loud tropical birds outside my Hong Kong apartment? And my unease when I woke because…
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Hilarity
Marie-Louise von Franz on the puer aeternus… I'm reading it because my new analyst mentioned it to me, rather pointedly. The book is a bit embarrassing, because it is too much on the mark in many places. However, it is also brilliant, fascinating, intelligent as she always is. (Was: I would have loved to have…
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Dreams of buildings
[The writing group exercise this week: list two buildings or places; list words associated with them; and what is unusual or unexpected that happens in those buildings?…] I am always enchanted – literally: mesmerized, ensorcelled, under the power of, unwilling to leave them – by buildings that flow. Ancient buildings made by hand, to no…
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Tree, cloud
It is simple, but always striking… especially for one who comes from calmer climates. The wind is from the west, blowing strong all week on the back of my flat, the side with my bedroom, the side where the kitchen and bath are built in. The kitchen and bath, being towards the back and more…
Paul Attinello 