Words of the week

I bet I don't stick to this.

Word of the week in English:

peculation=embezzlement "The peculations of small Italian businessmen lack charm" (A. Lurie)

Word of the week in French:

occire (pronounced ox-ear)=to slay (says it's either obsolete or humorous - I can identify with that): "Mais pourquoi qu' t' as occis le mataf?' (Genet - yes, that one) - "Why did you slay the sailor-guy?'

Arcades, Benjamin, surrealism etc.

Remember my posts the other day about surrealism

http://mikeinbrussels.blogspot.com/2009/04/twist-of-malice.html and http://mikeinbrussels.blogspot.com/2009/04/narcissism.html?

Well, for those interested (hello no-one! - haven't I seen you nowhere before?) the University of Essex (always good to plug Essex) has a good resource (as I think you're supposed to call it) which also publishes a journal. A good article (bit esoteric at times for me though) here http://www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk/publications/papers/journal1/index.htm talks about arcades, rather like the ones in Bologna. This is a self-consciously militant view on Walter Benjamin (he's a kind of Marxist rabbit) and arcades http://www.militantesthetix.co.uk/waltbenj/yarcades.html and it also has a great pink background. Brussels supposedly has the first covered arcades in the world - so take that Parisians!

Less ponce-ily (or maybe not), arcades like the one on the right in Bologna, particularly when captured on photo (or even better in painting or in writing) can be kind of passages into dreams and other subconsciousnesses - more so perhaps than the kind of arches or arcades you'd find in a cathedral or bank (or even the arched window in Play School). I wrote a very bad poem indeed about arcades, but I like the arcade concept: arches soaring upwards yet being closed in, just like consciousness is rooted in subconsciousness and topped off by our extinction, and constantly reflected in the shopping windows of our life's journey. They protect you from the rain too. Gosh!

One of the perks of being an OUSA Continental European activist is that you get your own private jet just in case you need to leave somewhere in a hurry.