I Don't Mind

 Ever since his childhood my oldest son's response to many questions was, "I don't mind." 

"Darling, would you like to have chicken or hotdogs for dinner?"

"I don't mind"

"Where should we go today?" 

"I don't mind" 

It drove me nuts.  I wanted him to make a choice, to state his opinion, but mostly for me, as a non-native English speaker "I don't mind" translated into "I don't care".  I couldn't make my peace with it.

Interestingly enough, not long ago I read a book "It's All The Same To Me" by Moshe Gersht, which gave me a very different perspective to that phrase. 

The author links it to the practice of dropping expectations and letting go of outcomes, along with the  judging the outcomes as good or bad. He writes, "I don't mind means I don't put my ego, my mind, into what happen. My opinion of it doesn't matter...I don't mind means I don't judge."

What can I say, my older son was always wise beyond his years. I should have listened more carefully to what was behind his words.

Quoting  J. Krishnamurti and my son as well :

"Would you like to know my secret? I don't mind what happens"

Language Wonders

The quotes are often find their way to people without any effort on our part. They just appear in our line of vision and grab our attention. Consider this..

 Our young waitress in a restaurant was standing with her back to us, her hands folded behind her back - the words "Omnia mea mecum porto" were running along the forearm. They did caught my attention - it was Latin, which probably should not have been a big surprise considering that we are in Italy, but the meaning! The meaning was so good, "All that is mine, I carry with me". Considering my "nomadic" life style and upcoming departure from the city I had a privilege to call home for the past three years - I took it as a sign that all will be well. 

I searched for an appropriate translation to my native language and realized that I knew the phrase all  the way from childhood, "Все своё ношу с собой." It made me smile and think how wonderfully strange the life is. I recognized the familiar proverb only by reading it in Latin, and translating it in my head English...
 

Some quotes are just priceless

  "The first step doesn't bring you where you want to be, it takes you from where you are." Alejandro Jodorowsky *

*Alejandro Jodorowsky  - Chilean-born  French filmmaker and  writer

Thomas Mann makes me laugh

Before returning books to the library I have to write down some quotes that made me giggle. (Both are from Thomas Mann’s “Tristan”)

“Ah, what activity! How she (Fraulein von Osterloh) plies, now here, now there, now upstairs, now down, from one end of the building to the other! She is queen in kitchen and storerooms, she mounts the shelves of the linen-presses, she marshals the domestic staff; … she keeps house diligently, furiously; and her exceeding capacity conceals a constant reproach to the world of men, to no one of whom has it yet occurred to lead her to the altar.”

And, about Fraulein von Osterloh again: “She had read it (a novel) once, in a spare quarter-hour, and found it ‘very cultured’- which was her circumlocution of inhumanly boresome”.

Who knew, that Thomas Mann can be funny? I had hard time reading Mann’s works in university and I still have hard time reading them now. For me his style is like an iron gates which craftsmanship, intricate details you admire but they also prevent you from entering a garden hidden behind and fully revel in its beauty (ha, ha and apparently his style is contagious).

I picked up his book because of the “Death in Venice” or, being more precise, because I wanted to watch Visconti’s version of “Death in Venice”, so it seemed only logical to reread the original.

The central theme – an old man infatuation with a young boy, obsession born out of pure admiration of beauty, passion destroying the soul and resulting in death - is utterly fascinating. The most interesting is that the passion continues to swell despite lack of interaction between Gustav von Aschenbach and Tadzio; there are only chance meetings and glances there. I wonder if the novel would have been published now with political correctness and all. At the beginning of the century this topic seemed to be common. Épater la bourgeoisie, indeed.