Status Updates From Wohin gehst du, mein Leben?...

From a distance he watched the door open and then close again. He became aware of the silence lying upon the street.

Sometimes, in the early morning, in the summer, the light shown most gently on the earthenware teapot and, seeing it, he would feel tears come into his eyes. I could never have experienced that light if I had not been alone, he would say. I could never have felt as I did then that I wanted to bless the world and be blessed by it in turn.

Amidst the cruel wolves I wander lost,
And feel the winter come, whose icy frost
With trembling horror makes my skin to crawl.

He would tell of his fantasies of drowning, vivid images he experienced at the time he was living in Paris after the death of his first wife. As I sank I would feel quite relieved, he would say. I would think: There goes another life - and know I had not finished with this one.

… The pre-Raphaelite artist had put all his effort into making Ophelia pathetic while Bonnard had put his into catching the light of the bathroom, forcing us to recognize that we are all temporal creatures, emerging into the light for a few brief seconds, before we disappear again…

Sometimes, in the early morning in spring and summer, when the light was exceedingly gentle as it touched the rounded belly of the glazed earthenware teapot, he would be filled with a sense of extraordinary peace and well being.

He had a good collection of early music and his one indulgence was occasionally adding to it - Harnoncourt and the Concentus Musicus of Vienna he particularly admired, and he would often put on their superb recording of Monteverdi‘s Orfeo with the dazzling Jeanne Deroubaix as the Messenger:

I come to you, Orpheus,
an ill- fated bearer of tidings
Still more ill-fated and more tragic:
Your lovely Eurydice…

"A veces, en verano, los primeros rayos del día brillaban sobre la tetera de loza con una suavidad extrema, y al verlo, los ojos se le anegaban de lágrimas. Nunca habría podido experimentar esa luz de no haber estado solo, decía."

"Hay una especie de pesar en la soledad, decía. La dulzura y la tristeza se unen. Y Monteverdi es el artista de ese estado de ánimo. El estado de ánimo, decía, de nuestros tiempos, pues no importa lo cerca que nos hallemos de otro ser humano que siempre, en el fondo, sabemos que estamos solos."
🖤🖤🖤🖤

"Eran palabras pero más que palabras, había ritmo pero más que ritmo . Si un ser humano había escrito esos versos, y no había motivo para dudarlo, entonces la vida era en efecto algo maravilloso."

"El hombre es un ser social, decía él, y llega un momento en que él esfuerzo de tener que tomar cada decisión a solas se vuelve casi insoportable."

"A veces se llevaba el sobado ejemplar de los poemas de Shakespeare y se sentaba a leer a la sombra de los limeros de los Jardines de Luxemburgo."