Albert Seba (1941)
To begin with, there's no flawless method - it's all doubt and detour ...
Albert Seba, pharmacist and collector of ethnografics, was friends with Bob Tagge for years.
Seba was world famous in his field but has not been seen in public for more then twenty years. He was born at the beginning of the war in East Friesland, studied medicine in Sande and Groningen and started working (succesfully as it appeared) for all kind of firms and companies in Asia and Latin America. Somewhere around 1978, 1979 he settled in Amsterdam, where he practised as a pharmacist. He brought along an enormous ethnographic collection, partly gained during his travels and partly acquired by a shrewd bartering with uninsured sailors, as he came to visit them in the Port of Amsterdam with medicine they needed. The collection made a big impression on Bob Tagge.
in his limited spare time Seba worked on cataloguing his collection, but soon realized that the project was far beyond his possibilities. He asked Bob and Bob's friend Peter Artedi to assist him in this. Bob, however, couldn’t accept working with Seba’s code of classification and as Albert Seba rejected working with Bob’s thesaurus, they both went their own way. It is said that Artedi continued working on the fismask part of the collection for some time, but was reported dead by drowning in one of the canals after a dinner at Seba’s. What exactly happened and where Seba, Artedi and Tagge are at the moment remains a mystery.
Om te beginnen is er geen feilloze methode
het is zover het oog reikt
en het daarin geziene.
Planten kunnen als voorbeeld dienen.
Wie van de planten wil leren krijgt kansen genoeg.
Maar vanwege de rapportage wil het toezicht dat we moeite doen
voor de methode. Het is een mager begin de bewering dat niets stilstaat
dat niets blijft, dat de meest succesvolle levende organismen gewend zijn om te groeien.
Groei is een beweging
Groei zoekt niks in de palmen en alles in de groei.
Groei is vitaal, is feitelijk.
It took a long time to finish.
All summer long, in defiance of the heat, we tidied up the classification tables
took new cuttings and guided them towards the cool morning
where we fell into each other’s arms, exhausted but satisfied.
Freed from the tables briefly, not quite knowing how to interpret the limbs
we’d used to support the desks and display cases.
2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, , 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59, 61, 67, 71, , 73, 79, 83, 89, 97, 101, 103, 107, 109, 113, 127, 131, 137, 139, 149, 151, 157, 163, 167, 173, 179, 181, 191, 193, 197, 199, 211, 223, 227, 229, 233, 239, 241, 251, 257, 263, 269, 271, 277, 281, 283, 293, 307, 311, 313, 317, 331, 337, 347, 349, 353, 359, 367, 373, 379, 383, 389, 397, 401, 409, 419, 421, 431, 433, 439, 443, 449, 457, 461, 463, 467, 479, 487, 491, 499, 503, 509, 521, 523, 541, 547, 557, 563, 569, 571, 577, 587, 593, 599, 601, 607, 613, 617, 619, 631, 641, 643, 647, 653, 659, 661, 673, 677, 683, 69
Forms, Figures, Tables, Ideas.
All that happened once.
Difficult to think, given the absent wind in the picture.
When the lull inches across the afternoon and your lips don’t move any air about either.
The thought scares me, I try to comfort myself with what I know, but can’t find a single fact that brings relief. The photos still don’t convey anything of what continues to grow inside the lab technician.
Where to go
the day we see
there is nowhere to go?
all that remains
and the rain making sound
all that
all that
that all one’s thoughts
have been thought by others
one another
confusion and balance
other times not
Water is the mouth
I am your confusion
I that must always be
the only possible point of departure
the darkness that
sleeps, the blood in the body that sleeps
tomorrow it will be almost sleep
always take up sleep, also
Zoals de planters zich tot de houthakkers verhouden.
De palmen hebben zwaar op onze schouders gedrukt. Als idee van hout, maar meer als idee op zich. Steeds als in onze gesprekken een stilte viel waren het de palmen die onze gedachten innamen.
We hebben de liefde van planters en houthakkers hoog zitten. Daar gaan we in de tabellen niet graag aan voorbij. We weten dat we in kaart brengen waar anderen hun argumenten aan ontlenen.
Zoals de kaart zich tot de argumenten verhoudt.
The rules are given
in order to make them prevail.
Which rules? he asks her
and his movement beats out the hours, like a bird.
Someone else, on the other side of that movement
ducks
and holds an arm over the head.
Suppose this is a bird
says the one who is staring at a spot
that is slowly becoming red.
I went to see if it showed:
the sun’s position, swallows under the gutter.
Difficult to say.
All those empty barns. Land everywhere
this landscape started to be
and lots in it
that was beyond repair.
Had not only come here
but also overtaken
I was
an acre carried to this head
to have been for this acre.
This led to sand and stones
and I lay there
until the rain came.
Nobody who can remember
what may still be gathered
and dried with care.
