CALCULATION OF CHANCES

What would the odds be against a sheet of paper – until a moment ago, a letter cherished in its envelope, folded in four – casually thrown over one’s shoulder after answering its contents, in such a manner that, when I turned around to check the address written on it, that same leaf of paper is left standing on the carpet, like a kind of little Gehry-wall?

A letter standing as a house – which is exactly what I wrote to its author, my son, about its contents. Word, now by a miracle taken quite literally.

About the suicide of the Dutch author Zwagerman I had already read the news elsewhere. Of my aversion to both this writer and our conductor Bernhard Haitink my son knew already. Now he wrote to me this postscript. Hidden away in sweet, deep and distant France, I was still ignorant of the second titbit of news -:

“Joost Zwagerman has been returned to the National Orchestra and Bernard Haitink in his depression committed suicide – or was it the other way round…”

Gorgeous son!

Sierksma, La Roche 09.21/2015

What would the odds be against a sheet of paper – until a moment ago, a letter cherished in its envelope, folded in four – casually thrown over one’s shoulder after answering its contents, in such a manner that, when I turned around to check the address written on it, that same leaf of paper is left standing on the carpet, like a kind of little Gehry-wall?

Ill.

A letter standing as a house – which is exactly what I wrote to its author, my son, about its contents. Word, now by a miracle taken quite literally.

About the suicide of the Dutch author Zwagerman I had already read the news elsewhere. Of my aversion to both this writer and our conductor Bernhard Haitink my son knew already. Now he wrote to me this postscript. Hidden away in sweet, deep and distant France, I was still ignorant of the second titbit of news -:

“Joost Zwagerman has been returned to the National Orchestra and Bernard Haitink in his depression committed suicide – or was it the other way round…”

Gorgeous son!

Sierksma, La Roche 09.21/2015

Author: rjsiersk

Sierksma was born in Friesland, a 'county' in the northern part of the Netherlands with its own language which he does not speak and with an obstinate population to which he both belongs and does not belong. A retired Professor of Social Philosophy and Aesthetics, as a Harkness fellow he taught at Rutgers and Berkeley Universities in the USA, and at GUAmsterdam and TUDelft in the Netherlands. In 1991 he was awarded his PhD from Leiden University on the subject of 'Surveillance and Task: Labour Discipline between Utilitarianism and Pragmatism'. His books include Minima Memoria (1993), Lost View (2002 with Jan van Geest), and Litter Scent (2013). He has published poems and articles in Te Elfder Ure, Nynade, Oasis and the Architectural Annual. Half the year he lives in Haarlem, the other half he spends in la France Profonde, living ‘in his own words’ as the house out there was bought with the winnings from his essay Eternal Sin, written for the ECI Essay Prize (1993). In this blog, Sierksma's Sequences, written in English, he is peeping round his own and other people’s perspectives. Not easily satisfied with answers nor with questions, he turns his wry wit to a number of philosophical and historical issues. His aim in writing: to make parts of the objective world light up in his personal perspective - not my will, thine! Not being a thief, he has no cook, one wife, some children, one lover and three cats. The reader, interested in my writings on aesthetics, literature, and sociology, may want to open Academia.edu, where various pieces are published.

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