Point of no return!

"Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean toward each other, black and omnious, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness - a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild." - by Jack London

Tickets are booked! Greenland, I can't wait for you.

The call of the wild

Just finished Jack London's "Call of the wild". It's the first book I read from him and what can I say? I'm a fan! Really inspireing... Here are again some of my favourite quotes:

"Mercy did not exist in the promordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of time, he obeyed."

"But especially he love to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sound as man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called - called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come."

"He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survived."

The law of club and fang

"He had been suddenly jerked from the heart of civilization and flung into the heart of things primordial. No lazy, sun-kissed life was this, with nothing to do but loaf and be bored. Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment's safety. All was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril. There was imperative need to be constantly alert; for these dogs and men were not town dogs and men. They were savages, all of them, who knew no law but the law of club and fang."

Greenland, here i come...

Desolation Angels

Last night I finally finished "Desolation Angels" from one of my favourite authors: Jack Kerouac. It's the 8th book I read from him, and as always it wasn't a bit of a let down. Here are some of my favourite quotes:

"But I will be the Void, moving without having moved."

"Desolation Adventure finds me finding at the bottom of myself abysmal nothingness, worse than that no illusion even."

"Rucksack Revoluton! Going up to the hills to meditate and ignore society."

"The Vision of freedom of eternity which I saw and which all wilderness mermitage sainds have seen, is of little use in cities and warring societies such as we have. [...] Time enough to die in ignorance, but now that we live what shall we celebrate, what shall we say? What to do?"

"I see the big sad invisible wings on all the shoulders and I feel bad they'Re invisible and of no earthly use and never were and all we're doing is fighting to our deaths."

"'I don't know, I don't care and it doesn't matter' will be the final human prayer."

"You learn pure things on the mountain, don't you? Don't you feel that you appreciate life more?"

"If you can't have fun, turn to religion."

"Desolation is desolation everywhere and desolation is all we got and desolation ain't so bad."

"Being thrown to the crocodiles of life - in the river of life - which is what birth is."

"Now I was alone again. And the same feeling came to me: Avoid the world, it's just a lot of dust and drag and means noting in the end. But what to do instead?"

"Souls in Heaven said: "We want to try mortal existance, O God, Lucifer said it's great!" - Bang, down we fall, to this, to concentration camps, gas ovens, barbed wire, atom bombs."

"Why travel if not like a child?"

"When you're young you work because you think you need the money. When you're old you already know you don't need anything but death, so why work?"

"You gotta have fun, good food, good beds, nothing more. [...] Make yourself a haven in this world and heaven comes after."

Fire and Ice

I was just browsing through the pictures I have on my computer and found the ones from my trip to Iceland last summer again. Such an amazing country. Here are some expressions. I'm super-siked right now, cause next year I'll go to Greenland for two weeks and I think it'll be at least just as beautiful.

Birds

Don't ask me why, but I love to take pictures of birds while they're flying. Especially doves.

Athens, Greece. August 2009.

Prague, Czech Republic. October 2008.

Berlin, Germany. April 2009.

Vienna, Austria. January 2009.

Focus on the light!

This is a picture of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche in Berlin, that got bombed down in the night of the 23rd of November 1943. It's still a very impressive building and also the new church, that was build nearby, is pretty interesting. What I really like about this picture is the light cone! Looks like magic.

Below Sea Level

Today I went to the cinema to see "Below Sea Level", the newest movie from Gianfranco Rosi. The screening was part of the viennese film festival Viennale. The were a coule of other flicks I wanted to see, like "Moon", "Antichrist" or "Fish Tank", but most of them were sold out within hours.

"Below Sea Level" drew my attention cause in the summarisation it said, that it told the story of a commune made up by some dropouts in the middle of the californian desert. Well, that's exactly what the film is all about. Rosi spent like 2 years in the commune and the result were the 115 minutes that flickered over the screen today. Within these almost 2 hours Rosi presents the fates of a few selected charakters.

For me, who has a very romanticising view on droping out of society, was it really easy to connect to some of the characters, mainly those, who chose this way of life. The life in the desert seemed to be hard, but also very rewarding in the sense of personal freedom. I could imagine very well to live in this comune too for a while. Must be a very interesting experience.

Fans of Thoreau, "Into The Wild" and Beatnick-Culture (Kerouac) should defenitely check this movie out!

Man of Tao

"...to see the world from the viewpoint of solitude and to meditate upon the world without being imbroglio'd in its actions, which have by now become famous for their horror & abomination - I wanted to be a Man of Tao, who watches the clouds and lets history rage beneath."