It was an afternoon last week.
How Did I Get Here?
There is a small explanation needed how I got from “Waxy” to an Ireland rugby jersey. Only a small one, really.
Frankfurt am Main has quite a few Irish pubs and we tried out a few but Waxy’s is the one we go to when we want to watch a rugby match. It hasn’t got as many screens as O’Reilly’s at the station, but it’s not as cramped as Mac Gowan’s on the Zeil, Frankfurt’s shopping street. And in the Anglo-Irish Pub in Sachsenhausen you sometimes have to argue with the English football fans if an interesting football game is on. Besides – Waxy’s has the easiest for parking for out-of-towners like us.
With Ireland doing well in this year’s Six Nations, Waxy’s was the first association that came to mind when I heard today’s prompt
A Really Large Folly
Sue’s series of follies had me thinking. There are certainly follies in Germany (I am only talking of the architectural type, I’m sure there are enough follies in many other areas) but there is no proper name for them. I found an interesting discussion amongst translators and although a number of possible words are discussed, the final conclusion is that “folly” is best left unchanged.
The largest folly I know is the Red Mosque in the palace gardens in Schwetzingen. It was built in the late 18th century, not as house of worship but because eveything oriental was in fashion at the time. It was meant as a monument to oriental thought and wisdom, many supposedly Arabic quotes were used to decorate the insides. Oddly enough – it has been used by Muslims for worship (for example by French prisoners of war from the Maghreb after the Franco-Prussian war in 1870/71) as well as a jazz club by the US American occupying forces after world war II.
Climbing up and down a Boulder Field
And when your stamina runs out you can sit and let your imagination wander. What do you see?
A duck or an elephant or something completely different?
Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Rocks, Boulders, Stones
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Whodunnit
Inchoate acts in the criminal sense are “incomplete offences”. These acts are not complete offences as they are performed in the process of the commission of the final crime.
But what was the crime? A grubby hand stealing a biscuit and the offender biting off a piece?
Or is the crime in progress that of a chocolate chip pacman about to devour a star?
Spring Is Acoming
I like this shot of our local park. All that is missing are people, then it would be very close to Cee’s photo.
And although it is not yet Easter, it’s been such a mild winter that Cee’s strollers in the park reminded me of the famous “Easter Walk” from Goethe’s Faust (the translation is by Edgar Alfred Bowring):
From the ice they are freed, the stream and brook, By the Spring’s enlivening, lovely look; [....] Growth and formation stir everywhere, ‘Twould fain with colours make all things bright, Though in the landscape are no blossoms fair. Instead it takes gay-decked humanity.
Faust observes people leaving the city for their first spring walk-about on Easter Sunday. There are not enough flowers yet, so the people in their Sunday finery supply the colours.
Cee’s Midweek Madness Challenge: Pick a Topic from my Photo in February
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Thoughts About a Sculpture
Geriatri’x’ oddity of the day is a sculpture with many faces – more elaborate and less crude than this one:
Faces in the “Skulpturenpark” in Bad König – which is basically an abandoned lot where a couple of artists have left their works for everybody to look at. The pieces are kind of weird, intriguing even. I’m not sure I like the words that one of them often added to his scultpures – I think it limits the interpretation of the onlookers. If I hadn’t gone for a square format I would have cut off the writing completely. So, in true odd fashion, I left half of it in the photo rather than losing some of the faces.
If you are curious here is the translation:
“Rather the cleverest among the stupid than the stupidest among the clever” Paul August Wagner 2020
I am not sure I agree with the quote, reminiscent of something Julius Caesar has said (according to Plutarch): “I had rather be first in a village than second at Rome.” I say reminiscent because the meaning is quite different. And this is exactly why I find these added words unsuitable: I have now thought about the saying, what it might mean and what it alludes to, and neglected to reflect about the piece of art. I wonder if that was the artist’s aim. Odd.
pictures imperfect blog 