4 posts tagged “brussels”
Still not ready to talk about the Kiefer show, but soon. Maybe Paul will beat me to the punch. Here are three favorite photos from Brussels: the window outside my hostel at dawn; the cathedral (Saints Michael & Gudula, apparently?); and the lions at the Palais des Académies, emblemizing the eternal condition of the academic: one is roaring, the other sleeping.
There were parakeets across from the Palais in the park, green ones. No prayer of photographing them.
I spent Saturday wandering the city peacefully. On Sunday I got a cold. Now I'm home, sniffling, prone to sudden bouts of sleep and staring in mild horror at the pile of work ahead of me; still, it's good to be back and beginning to mend the havoc that Europe wreaked on my sleep pattern. I haven't yet figured out how to account for the trip properly. My cousin and her partner very graciously put me up for the night in the Hague before I flew out, but conversation was desultory, very tied to the present moment, which was true of most of the journey. I took a lot of pictures, I walked all over the city center and tried to speak French; I was mostly happy, but that happiness now seems like a sign of decadence. As does the sickness. But I can tell everyone I'm big in Europe now! They're publishing my paper, most likely in October, so I've got a couple months to make it worth putting my name on it.
Home with P. now, happily sleepily, thank goodness.
Q & A in German. I'm still standing.
I have no time to write here -- woke up & it was raining, "no possibility of taking a walk today;" hey, y'all should (re)read Villette in my honor. Where are the cafes? I'm okay with the magpie-to-cafe ratio being this high, of course, but I still haven't had a croissant. Or any fresh fruit recently. Amazing what you miss, etc.
Comment here if you happen to want a copy of "Les Bienveillants" -- I can pick one up on my way back. I'm pretty convinced it's not my thing, though.
I've had several realizations. One: Elfriede Jelinek's plays are not really performed in the U.S., whereas in Europe they're fairly common, so it's no surprise that I'm the only American here. Two: jet lag is no joke. Three: Germans (or Europeans in general) do a different sort of literary criticism, it seems, much more bound to working theories and less tolerant of opinionating. I suspect people will just blink at my paper. Four: I'm really, weirdly happy with it all. I really wish my German were better, but it would have to be practically fluent to be up to snuff here. The conference hall is a palace (literally). There was a lovely performance of chamber music in the background of the last panel yesterday, while I was trying to do breathing tricks to keep from passing out. It worked, but I'm not sure how. I skipped dinner and darted back to the hostel, preserved from collapsing on the Metro only by exposure to intermittent blasts of cold air. I'm still really, really tired.
