how it is possible to start an entry and then completely lose concentration and just drift into some weird gravy of words. about apples. big and small. one of the nice surprises about the move to new york was that thing with my allergies. when in germany, i would spend spring and summer and even much of the autumn weeping and nose-drooling and just feeling horrible in ways i could not describe since i was too far behind a painful slime wall of allergy symptoms. i was not the only one, of course, friends had allergies too, some so bad that they would get their backs turned into matrices of dirt and pollen, just to find out what it was that caused them the seasonal agony. we would just hang around, our noses sore, we barely were able to see each other, the entire world was blurry and painful and just really unbearable. we probably looked like professional boxers in round 35. even when i had that first good interview with franz aumüller of trust, he made sure to make himself a copy of that self portrait i had made called: ich, mit heuschnupfen. (I, with hay fever.) okay, so coming to new york changed things. it was a big surprise really. my allergies were not half as bad, not a third, maybe even less. it was such a relief. i could finally turn into a full year person, finally, finally... well, perhaps the allergies just did not kick in because there was no time to expose myself to anything that would be even close to those buckets of pollen thrown onto every car in some of the streets where i used to live in germany. so maybe if i had only chosen to lock myself into a windowless office and traveled only by underground train, maybe then i would have been able to avoid those allergies in germany as well? maybe the reason why i would not get any indoor trouble would have something to do with the fact that i simply had no furniture that could collect dust and that even the office had barely been opened, so even there much of the stuff was made from freshly manufactured gefillte wood. so things looked pretty much like a paradise, at least when it came to allergies. and pretty much as in any garden of eden, the fun ended quickly once i bit onto not much more than an apple. my first apartment in the city was on 73rd street on the west side (that would be if we do not count that wig-maker office and the brazilian hotel in times square) and around the corner from my place there was a version of a garden of eden called fairway. (next to citarella) Fairway was a gigantic place where the floor was covered with wood chips and the food was fresh and where the only time one could even hope to get in and out in under 2 hours was after sundown on friday, or perhaps on any given "day" after 3am.) Okay, it was not that bad, but it was pretty serious. the place was open 24 hours, the food was incredibly fresh and arranged in superhumanly gigantic piles. there was a wide variety of produce, and even the more complicated stuff was really sweetly out there. the real estate broker had sold the place to me as if it were an extension of my refrigerator. it had to be since my refrigerator thing was something of a sub-european size, a rather small piece of vintage engineering, the cheapest model my landlord could get in 1966. oh, i just completely lost my track now. what the hell was the story? oh, i used to like apples when in europe. the smaller ones were often better than the ones that were the legal fruit endorsed by the european union. american apples were shiny and gigantic. there was an amazing amount of them in and outside of fairway. i got myself some. bit into it. a few minutes later i was barely able to breathe, and much of the inside of my mouth felt as if somebody had airbagged it. i could not eat the american apples. there were so many of them. none of them i could dare to even try. years had to pass until i finally also developed all those seemingly cured allergies. i am not looking forward to the summer now, or spring or... i don't know what to look forward to really. (i am kidding. all will be wonderful.) oh boy... my attention span is fading. the reason why i even started writing is to have a note for myself remembering when i finally managed to eat three apples this morning without any close to death experience. i peel these buddies now, which reminds me of days of my early childhood. and i can eat apples again. (i think?) so why did i have to write this whole confused entry about all that? i have no idea. i think my eye itches a bit too much right now. the tree in the back yard is ready to just explode in flowers. maybe that's why. (ouch)