Rob van Kranenburg is back to blogging: http://robvankranenburgs.wordpress.com/

I have now visited Dublin three times and a larger part of my recollections of Dublin consist of sitting on a bus or sitting in a car going from one end of the city to another. Dublin is not an easy city to get around in. The city centre may be fairly small, and places like the grounds of Trinity College very agreeable, the rest is a nightmare of cars, cars, cars, and the public transport is absolute shit (‘sheit’). Only if you happen to live near a DART station and have to go somewhere near a DART station it’s okay. But the DART goes from Howth to Greystones, along the coast, which is great if one likes to go for a cliff walk (from Bray to Greystones or v.v.) and not so great if one stays in either Lucan or Blanchardstown.

But… the cycling scene seems to grow. Not only are there more cycling lanes, I have the impression I saw more cyclists than a year ago. I always have to look at the bikes in cities that I visit & I’m often (if not always) impressed by the courier-scene. Most of the bikes in Dublin are cheap mountainbikes and city-bikes — often extremely dirty. (One wonders if it’s worth while to clean one’s bike in Ireland where it might rain every day). Last year I think I saw one track bike.

This year I spotted:
— a guy with a small rucksack, in full cycling gear, going downhill a big road, to the north of Dublin, on a track bike. Yes. He rode pretty fast. Impressive. It looked like he came back from a race, and still had a long way to ride.
— a courier track bike with a chainwheel (is that the right word for: ‘tandwiel’) on both sides of the wheel: so one has two gears, pre-derailleur style, when one puts the wheel in the other way around.
— a girl on a custom blue racing bike, sawed-off ‘guidon’, brakes, a full pignon, without shifters or a derailleur — though with the spring & little wheels to keep the chain under pressure. Changing gear would be possible by hand.
— her boyfriend on a beautiful trackbike with sawed-off ‘guidon’.
— and for the rest about five or six couriers going through the traffic on track bikes — which I think is more impressive, conisdering the Dublin traffic, than the New York-couriers.

A fairly large part of my stay in & around Dublin was taken up by ‘family-related-stuff’ — the family of F. that is. F’s godson (son of her sister) was christened on sunday. I attented 2 masses: saturday evening mass & the christening on sunday. I was amazed, if not shocked by how quick these masses were done over with. Rushed is not even the right word. On saturday there was literally no pause between the blessing at the end and the words “that’s it, see you next time”. The priest hurried off to see the football match. The whole thing took 35 minutes. The only ‘music’ was the sound of coins in the collecting baskets, heard while the prayer for the confession of the sins was said. One positive thing: the reading from the Scriptures were done by women.

I have a protestant background & as a kidI used to go to church with my parents every sunday. We went to a beautiful church (the Grote Kerk in Almelo), where at that time Rev. Otten was preaching. There was always an elaborate liturgy — Otten would say or sing a sentence, the community would answer, then the organ, then the small choir. Very well orchestrated. The same thing for the singing of Psalms & Songs. A few years later the small choir became so good that they would perform things like the Angus Dei as composed by — I think — Buxtehude. So although a protestant church, there would be a very clear sense of tradition and beauty that a lot of people only associate with the Roman Catholic church. The sermon — as far as I remember — was really an interpretation of the Scriptures, often touching upon Jewish traditions (that Otten was particularly interested in). It’s not that I liked going there (I rather did something else on a Sunday morning), but these sunday mornings have certainly had a positive effect on my ideas of the Church and religion.

The christening on sunday took place in a church in Lucan. Renovated a few years back, the organ was taken out. The music during the christening came from a tiny cassetterecorder (and was some sort of Irish new-agey-folk-music). The church owned a beamer to project texts in big white letters on Powerpoint-blue background against the wall. (It was not used during the christening). The priest did not know the name of one of the two kids being christened and basically no-one, including the priest had any clue of the order of the proceedings — the priest flipping back and forth through the leaflet and at one point asking a person to read from the Scriptures, the person being very surprised since the indicated passage was not his to read. (F. — who’s a firm believer — was disappointed about this priest).

Well. I guess all this only showns how deep Catholicism is ingrained in Irish society.

— walk: Blanchardstown ‘Waterville’ – Blanchardstown Village, busstop
— bus: Blanchardstown Village – Dublin Airport
— plane: Dublin Airport – Schiphol
— train: Schiphol – Amsterdam Lelylaan
— tram: Amsterdam Lelylaan – Jan-Pieter Heijestraat
[food in Amsterdam, picking up the mail &c.]
— bike: Wilheminastraat – Amsterdam Centraal
— train: Amsterdam Centraal – Maastricht
— walk: Maastricht train station – Jan van Eyck Academy
— bike: Jan van Eyck Academy – Kanne

Not counting waiting times (long, as I arrived far too early at the airport), walks at the airports and stations, & walks so short they’re not worth mentioning.

No delays whatsover. Gorgeous weather.

I read two papers (Guardian of saturday & tuesday), half a Henry James story, checked 51 e-mails, wrote 4 and waited till I arrived. It took the whole day, from 10 in the morning till midnight.

Back to Amsterdam for a meeting of the jury of the ISOC Awards: http://www.isoc.nl/awards/. I’m a jury-member for the ‘Internet & the arts’-award. Nominees are:

Jan Robert Leegte: http://works.leegte.org
Joes Koppers: http://usemedia.com
Wilfried Houjebek: http://socialfiction.org/palimpsest
Peter Luining: http://ctrlaltdel.org
Niels Schrader: http://www.nielsschrader.de
Danielle Roberts: http://www.numuseum.nl

On friday I’ll fly to Dublin for a short visit. I’ll be offline for a few days then.

Cycling4all has scans online from the faxes that doctor Fuentes sent. I must say that seeing this evidence changes my perception of the case. Until now I’d be stressing the fact that persons are accused, found guilty and put outside the race before getting a chance to begin a proper juridical case. (Of course the whole affair still is a terrible mess legally seen).

I wonder what will happen with cycling — and with other sports (Fuentes had soccer-players and track-athletes as clients as well!). But I will enjoy the races just as much as ever. There will always be doping, the Fuentes-case is all part of the story of cycling & I love to follow that story. I’d wish it was less dirty, but I still enjoy the race.

I enjoy the race when my favorite wins. I also enjoy the race when my favorite does not win.

http://www.cycling4all.com/index.php?content=d_news13z.php.

That too much side-tracking. I’ll be off the field. Skimming trough & beginning to read Sincerity and Authenticy I conclude that this summary, taken from an anonymous review at Amazon, is all I need to know now: “Trilling draws a fine but deep distinction between two conceptions of selfhood. Sincerity, or being true to yourself with an eye to being true to others, was the dominant concern of Renaissance and early modern thought and literature, from Shakespeare to Rousseau. Beginning with Wordsworth, gaining momentum throughout the 19th century, and finally emerging with full force in the 20th, though, there is a new, more morally demanding ideal of being what or who one is, apart from all external conditions.” Just now I’m no so interested in reading an essay about Rousseau and Moliere, touching on Hegel too.

Trilling’s books are not in the library, and not at google.books. But there’s someone who’s gone through the effort of making a part available: http://www.noteaccess.com/Texts/Trilling/index.htm. Much obliged.

Very nice blog: http://www.waggish.org/. Mentions all my favorite writers :-)

Yesterday I took part in the first discussion of the Reading Department: http://www.reading.department.cc/. Using Skype for a collective chat — reading through Agamben’s text We Refugees. I had to log off at 21.30, at a moment when some interesting issues where coming up — a beginning of a critique of Agamben.

Well, that is what I am interested in, a critique of Agamben. (His texts are beautiful anyway). In order to to entangle both the fascination and the sense of unease with Agambens way of reasoning and doing philosophy. Or trying to do that. Something — I ‘feel’ — is not ‘right’ with Agamben, yet his analysis seems to be very precise and thorough, and to the point.

Taking up Dewey: maybe the problem lies in that Agamben, does use examples from experience, uses practical, political situations, but in the end relegates everything to the realm of ideas and ideals — and leaves it there. A realm of “Anschauung”… the spectator view of knowledge…

But I have to add a big question mark here.

— Then I stumble on this, in the statement of the Reading Department: “Can theory compete with an ongoing war? And what kind of implications bears the “distance of theory”?”

Is that the problem? Theory is not distant, should not be distant. Theory comes from and applies to the world of experience. Of course there are different layers of involvement, entanglement — but the realm of ideas and concepts is not seperate from dirty life. Distance is not the same as separation, but at some point distance becomes separation in practice.

Anyway. Maybe my conclusions are too eeeazy.