communing with shadows

Why write when there are so many brilliant quotes to share?

One could for instance quote from W.G. Sebald’s "A place in the country" ('Logis in einem Landhaus') - who weaves fascinating stories around over-sensitive writers, ill- equipped for an age of unfolding rationalism and competitive capitalism (stories spanning a period from late late 18th till early 20th C - somehow announcing the extreme inhospitality of the 21st century for over-sensitive aimless humanists)? .

There’s a world of understanding of the average human lot in this brilliant, pithy phrase of his:
“The gap between our longings and our rational strategy for living”.

 And here’s how his poetic insight deals with the economics of traded goods :
“[...] and sometimes on the perilous lonely peaks of this bric-a-brac mountain, here an ornate rococo clock and there a waxen angel lead a quiet and as it may be posthumous life. In contrast to the continuous circulation of capital, these evanescent objects have been withdrawn from currency, having long since served their time as traded goods, and have, in some sense, entered eternity.”
(I doubt  our electronic devices will not be granted so long an after-life)


Why post photos when one can also link to the extra-ordinary street photos by Vivian Maier ( 1926-2009).   
It’s an intensely satisfying romantic story, too. (Well, if it’s true, whispers the sceptic in me). A nanny roaming the streets on her days off, taking obsessively photos. Keeping hundreds and hundreds of unpublished prints and undeveloped film-rolls in a locker storage, unseen by anyone but herself until they’re discovered at an auction by a local amateur historian. And now, (after her death, alas) her photos are exhibited all over the world.