TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Tuesday, January 3, 2006

10:27 PM
Posted by jodi rose

the bridge stands, the river flows.
fog has descended again, obscuring the basilica.
time passes very slowly.

in the next chapter, Magris writes: 'the happ do best to stay at home'
Domi manere convenit felicibus - one of the latin mottoes adorning the castle of sigmaringen, celebrating the love of one's native place, the residing spirit, settled in its own dwelling and free from the craving to leave it.' (Claudio Magris, Danube p 48) To the writer Celine, the Danube seemed 'the putrid river of history... of universal flith and violence,' while Enrst Neweklowsky attempts to catalogue and classify the entire upper danube in three volumes examining the 'history of navigation from pre-roman to the present day - 1962 - the routes used and types of vessel, pirogues and steamships, propellors and floor plates, parts and gear of the vessels and the characteristics and differences of the various tributaries, the whirlpools and shallows, the innumerable types of raft and barge, the pros and cons of kinds of wood employed, the convoys, fjords and crossing places, the rafting of timber, the composition and customs of the boatmen, the sagas and superstitions of the river, the levying rights, voyages of sovereigns and ambassadors, the poems, the songs, the plays and novels born of the river waters....' A universal danube, a system of total knowledge.

which only serves to remind me of how random, fleeting and incomplete my own writing and experiences are - although there is room for this also in his great work, 'the achievement of totality which is attained only when the disorder of the world is assembled in a book and arranged in categories... he tames phenomena and makes them stand in line, but he devotes animated attention also to sensitive, ephemeral details, to unique occurences. His work also deals with changes of weather, the wind, unpredictable mishaps, a list of accidents (mortal or otherwise) taking place on board, the suicides and the murders, the divinities of the river, busts of the 132 boat masters of Ulm and the verses devoted to each of them... the heads of patron saints of the bridges, penalty laid down for the ship's cook who puts too much salt in the soup, and lists the names of the boatmen who were also innkeepers on the side, together with their inns.'

so there you go, maybe there is a place for this meandering, subjective collection of impressions and reflections, somewhere in the vast literature on the subject and location. It helps to have a wider perspective - thinking about the simon and judas festival, which has been going since 1400 and something, a friend tells me that she and her boyfriend had their first kiss at that fair this year, giving a wonderful sense of the personal intimate connection between history and 'life as it is lived'. And indeed maybe it's a mistake to attempt a total system, leading as it can to dicatators and fascisti. So in the name of anarchy and subversion, I will continue meandering.

Still a little lonely, a little alienated - accidentally read all of cold comfort farm today - briliant and hilarious, the perfect tonic for all these slovakian and hungarian starkadders who glare at me in the street, (gawping at me, wondering if I'm a virgin -says fran in black books about her visit to a village in cornwall) although I wish for a dashing young man to swoop by in his plane and pick me up for a trip to paris. sadly the crush has faded, in the face of lack of response - decided not to waste my time on people who aren't interested any more!

Making a list of things I'm greatful for, one of them is, well you people on the street might look at me as if I'm a freak - but I can leave!

Ah well, listening to the radio which gives a strangely comforting sense of being connected to the outside world. Thinking about how to make a radio bridge, through time and place.