Author: paulattinello
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Third, fourth, eighteenth thoughts
… on the other hand.. perhaps I should just get back to work. Or perhaps I really need more rest. Or… Too many years of interest in psychology, including pop psychology, including of course any possible interpretation of my own psychology, and interest in many ideas of productivity and success, or happiness, or, well, I…
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What Barcelona and a cat have in common
No, it’s not a riddle. It’s also not a forgotten manifesto from the Surrealists. I still want something… feeling relatively healthy though still not energetic (especially yesterday and today, oddly and inexplicably tired after short errands and walks); but I am restless, and childishly rebellious that I should expect myself to get back to work…
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Bonne anniversaire
Today is the second annual birthday of this blog: 369 posts (just over one every two days – a statistically lower rate than last year, but they’re often longer posts now). I remain pleased: this blog is what I want it to be, a support for writing, a communicative device, a casual map of my…
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Ostern in Stuttgart (III)
[A somewhat delayed continuation of my tales of being in hospital; third of perhaps four or five parts. Hey, it amuses me.] [March 24 – 27, 2008] Terrible days (Monday/Tuesday) It’s hard to explain the slightly crazed, exhausted misery of the two days, nearly three, after I was taken out of intensive care. There is,…
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Summer
The first day with a forecast of 70°, and with the east window thermometer showing 75° (my neighborhood is always warmer than the forecast – I think the weather station must be near the river – though, unhappily, the coming week will drop back down to 59° or so): I laid on a lawn chair…
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Babette
I have been reading Isak Dinesen’s stories for two or three days, marveling as always at how beautifully they are written, at how rich they are – like everyone I wish there were more of course, but they probably wouldn’t be so layered and subtle if she had written them much faster. This afternoon I…
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Restless spring
Five or six days of feeling better. No longer so weak or ill… and it’s spring outside. But not writing. Nor really working, in any way, not even going through old papers to throw them out. Some fragmentary gestures towards completing things. Perhaps if I at least finished writing about my hospital stay: not important,…
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For Vanessa: Reflections on Rubinstein
[A memorial concert was held for Vanessa Knights last Saturday, May 3, a bit more than thirteen months after her death at the age of 38. I gave the following speech, which includes excerpts from a book first published in 1985 and translated in 1989.] If you’ll allow me, I’m going to tell you about…
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Door into summer
One of Heinlein’s early novels – back when they were relatively short, amusing adventures, and before his testosterone-driven narcissism and paranoia drove him to write the sprawling, ranting novels of his late demented phase – was The Door into Summer (1956 – the year I was born). The pleasant conceit of the title was that…
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Flowers in the water
Hot bath with oils, flowers embedded in the solid blocks of oils… I haven’t done this for very long in my life, just the past four or five years; and I’ve mostly thought of, explained, them as indulgences and as survival: as pleasures that help me get through the northern British winters (and springs and…
Paul Attinello 