April 2004 Archives

Si me amas, no llores Si conocieras el misterio in menso del cielo donde ahora vivo. Si pudieras ver y sentir lo que siento lo que siento y veo en estos horizontes sin fin. Si pudieras gozar de esta paz indefinible. Ahora, el encanto de Dios me absorbe con su inmensa belleza y paz. Si me amas, no llores Martin Colon November 9. 1961 - January 20. 2001 Seen today in East Harlem, on the fence to a hand-ball court. Near a tree with two pairs of sneakers hanging off the branches.

The chef gave us an introductory present. Little fish had been included in the offering. I ended up crushing three or four little skulls. A horrible thought. I imagined what kind of scale would be needed if these fish were whales. Is this how Gozilla started?... The waitresses giggled on the sidelines. The chef snuck by our table to check if we were worthy. The Sake I wanted was clearly out of my Thursday Evening price range. The description to it read something like "If Sakes were people, this Sake would be an innocent little girl dancing on a sunlit morning meadow with a little fluffy puppy by her side." I kid you not, something along these lines was indeed the description next to a little jpeg of a bottle. I was shown an unfiltered alternative, a cloudy thin bottle which seemed to contain the helpless remains of some frankensteinian experiment gone wrong. (Decades before.) I ended up with some Masumi, Nanago. (the bottom of the page...) and it was so perfectly good... I thanked the waitress so much until she almost exploded with joy. (She smiled, okay? I just wanted to use "exploded with joy" somewhere in a silly context.) I did not eat much, just a little Kampyo roll, which complimented the Nanago well indeed. We ended up going back to the office and taking a tiny (really tiny) sample of the super special little bottle of Sake which came as a brave visitor from Tokyo a few weeks ago. We could not figure out the name on the bottle, but the few samples we had proved that even the best things in life have their superior champions... I will need to find ways to get another bottle of this flawless beverage somehow... Matt also gave me a brief introduction to the quality of the hand made sake glasses I have. I had no idea how incredibly precious they were... and I felt a bit like a boar wearing a pearl neckless once again. (Willing to learn.) I would like to remind myself at some other time, that today was a good one... yes, indeed... I wonder what will happen next?

that's just so pretty. so nice, so good. ignorance is only bliss when there are no discrepancies in ignorance levels between those involved... and since we humans just live for the comparison... we actually can't really perceive anything but comparisons... well... ignorance is not really bliss... unless... we all have not much of a clue about this one thing... and if not that... then something else. Big time. Brought to you by a simple evening mind, fueled by several cups of coffee, mixed with other, highly addictive substances. All legal, no worries, cheap... actually free. The week is not over, of course. Mittwoch, or Sroda, means... the middle of the week... but the amount of work that flew over my screen here feels like much more than a week. And it was good stuff... pretty, nice... blissful. And I should not say more about that. What language do you think in? I know some old "friends" who think incredibly well in numbers. Large numbers. Their numbers. I like to think in sounds... maybe an occasional picture, here, there... sometimes there might be some little idea mixed in... fun stuff... The path is a nice and happy one for me... mostly. And I was not shown a map, so things look different and new and I surprise myself over and over again... who would have thought that I would be able to bring things to such a complexity... who would have thought? Silly... such silly thoughts... I should go get a cab now. ... are we enjoying this entry somehow?

A police car sounding like a bitten monkey just rushed past the building towards the river. The cheese from the morning sandwich does not feel right in my warm mouth. The coffee was too light and too sweet, but I should really not complain, because no matter how hard I tried I could not have made coffee myself. Or milk, or sugar, or any of the ingredients. Including the tasty paper cup, the most prominent of the flavors on this one. I have had the strangest of dreams for the last few days. They all somehow involved places I somehow knew in Germany. Most of them featured some real loss of control. (As in driving a car, not as in personal hygiene.) As if the reality of things left behind had not been enough of a bizarre beast, my brain manages to somehow create incredible variations of the situations past. Franz Kafka and Sigmund Freud would have had a ball at the party I attended last night. The images were as clear as they were murky. The visitors had tongues as sharp as their hearts were dull. I woke up to a feeling of complete failure. Why would such bitter ghosts choose to hunt me down all the way to this actually not so unhappy place on the upper west side? What have I done? Or what have I not done? I will now close this little browser window and get on my way through the bellows of this beloved city into the bellows of one of my favorite skyscrapers, to work on one of my favorite projects with some of my favorite people who happen to be part of one of my most favorite agencies on the planet. Who is trying to send these disgusting vibes my way? (It is always nice to blame somebody else for very private feelings of "Angst". Well, whoever you are... please stop, okay?) The paper bag in which my sandwich came is called Joao de Sousa. I like that they all have their names. Will we ever know if the police car made the monkey sounds because it had to get somewhere, or just because the boys inside really wanted to run a red light? Good morning silly thoughts.

to wake up at sunrise is to see a slow wave of spectacular color roll over the city. And because of the way things are built here and because of my windows facing west, it appears as if the day began with glowing buildings across the river, in New Jersey... Some are golden, burning, right now, and soon all of Manhattan will also dive, head first, into this golden bath, which will then turn into that color neutral daylight. Have to rush now. It will be interesting to take the subway on such a Sunday morning... or maybe I should just walk? 50 blocks... this morning will belong to Adobe and their butterfly... -- and then... (it turns out that the butterfly session will probably take place next week, and not today. It was just me and the security guy at the adobe offices... but that's really okay... it will be nice to go back to sleep now too...)... (8:44AM)

She is so much bigger than she appears to be in these pictures... of course...

It was like trying to squeeze myself into a somewhat tight body, in which all of the organs appeared to be of the same kind and have escaped from exactitudes. Two of the pieces of the body seemed to have found their way onto the little stage and one of them was making strange sounds into the microphone. The other one was in the background, holding a bass. What followed felt as if we all had Group Sex with Super Mario Brothers, Yoshi and the little mushroom people... Okay, the music was actually pretty enchanting... (really had to check if the guys were real or made out of pixels though...) I also had to check twice if I maybe found myself in an instrumental secret track of some of the Stroke recordings... maybe?... The group performing was Ratatat and the location was the opening ceremony... down in SoHo... I was on a list, though nobody asked me for my name or anything for that matter... and I was invited through I somehow ended up not knowing anybody in the tightly packed room. A few bars later I was ready to talk to just about anybody, maybe... met two guys who prepared some indy500 broadcast snippets, a lady who read a book about serial killers on her clié (she made sure to point out that there was a major difference between those and mass murderers, who strike more at random.) The students on the train were visiting from Toulouse. Criminology was the topic here... A special custom Torta from the mexican truck down on 96th was a good next step for the evening... which then continued late into the night with some really incredibly dreamy ideas and things... But we would not want to describe everything here... Oh, I think I like Ratatat... -- Update: Wow, check this out! (what a brilliant little idea!)

A half inflated mylar balloon just flew by the window and offered a free reflective surface for a very brief moment. I did not take this free offer and just remained seated on the couch with the orange Sbritt t-shirt next to me and in direct extension an empty glass filled with the memory of a self mixed screwdriver and some plants sitting in the window in cups filled with new york tap water, and the water tower and the hudson river new jersey... i should be on a train now, i should be in the office now, i should be finishing an interesting portion of the new project... which is fun... except that it does overlap slightly with the things I tend to write here, which makes it harder for me to write anything here, as I do not really want things to overlap in such a way. Two objects can not occupy the same space at the same time, so what about thoughts, ideas?... or can objects also occupy the same space if the space is only turned into ideas first?... i am not even in the t-shirt and i can not be in the same spot as the t-shirt, but we are both certainly in the same room and the hudson river is here too, and even the mylar balloon, which actually never was here, suddenly occupies the same thought space. "las palabras son mentirosos" said Miguel, and indeed, it is possible to squeeze just about anything into a construct made out of words... On a completely unrelated note... I have been really enjoying the richness and depth of this... Interesting Source of knowledge and inspiration hmm... so fascinating... I wonder what happened to the balloon... -- oh, and I was just shown this and it is some scary piece of working with words...

Yes, we went to see Queen Mary 2 as she is docked just a few blocks from the office. She was obviously very well protected and maybe not quite as approachable as some of the ships usually are. She is quite spectacular though... no matter how one looks at her. I remember throwing up from the deck of this Polish ocean liner... We spoke about not taking pictures. We spoke about the ability to not be there. Abwesendheit. We spoke about the difference between objects created to touch the soul compared to things that invented to be sold. We spoke about fruit that looks great and has no taste. We spoke about the strange sensation that life happens in New York and that it is performed by amateurish actors in many other places. We spoke about the difference between a virtual encounter and a one on one personal conversation. We saw each other even though we were on completely different continents. Some of the old friends reappeared again. Some people from high school reappeared as... well, two people from high school... only with different titles. Some other old friends resurfaced as human beings, more real... somehow good... I am finally getting a little better... I think we might take a tour around Manhattan this weekend... If the weather will end up being as good as expected...

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Why would I possibly want to apply for some sort of permit in this strange office, somewhere in what appeared to be a place I left maybe in 1978? And why was everybody being so incredibly friendly? Why was my point of view an ever moving, suspended one, one that was able to travel from the packed side of the room, packed with those who had no chance to receiving any permits on that day, but maybe just appeared in the location to somehow keep warm on this cold december morning... through the gates, through the glass to the other side, where the desks of the officials made sad sounds under layers and layers of paper. And there were some rather nice drawings on the walls, very nice ones. Brilliant Matisse pieces, perhaps(?), tacked onto the wooden walls with various kinds of push pins and nails and things. And the scents were also much nicer on this side of the room. None of the linoleum smell and none of the sour old sweat smell made it to this, the official side... As I was leaving the court house, or whatever this place was, I had to step down some very unfinished, very steep, very dangerous looking stairs. And I knew that making it down to the street level was one of the tests one had to survive to make it here. Just as much as having all the documents was one of the tests. Just as much as being able to react to any kind of questions was a test as well. Some children were playing with their little critters... one of the animals managed to break free of its leash and ran out of the court house... We were in a small car, somewhere out there, far away... and we never really wanted to go back... At least I slept through half of the night, which might mean that I am slowly coming back to my senses. I am looking forward to that. I should check if the warm water is turned back on. There have been problems with it for the last few days now.

It was a Saturday morning, and the windows and doors and eyes and ears were open. Wind played with the light curtains and we sat in a soft place in the back of the apartment, talking about really silly things, like maybe the color of a falling leaf, or the strange idea of making pictures about the absence of things, or... well maybe just other things. And there were some pictures taken, some were really very bad, or just very different and there was a cat or two, or maybe some other animal, I do not remember. And the ceiling was far away and the music was just the perfect other person and there was coffee in the cup and there were little pieces of some sort of fruit on the table and there was some sort of bagel on some sort of plate, or maybe there was milk in the coffee or was it tea or was there bread or maybe an egg? And there were no passwords and there were no logins and no firewalls and there were no filters and one could hear the words between the lines and there were actually no lines. None of that. Just really some sort of undocumented conversation, though a very nourishing one. One that really opened new doors, and new rooms not reachable with any kind of search engine. Such simple stuff... and even writing about it here is one of the funniest things in the world...

The saxophone player outside deserves some music lessons. He can hold a tune for just a few seconds then he moves on to the next one and the next one and the next one and so on... I was just about to turn off my iTunes, when the software told me that there are users connected to my library. I checked and indeed. Two of my neighbors are listening to my stuff. Good for them. I just with they would share too... maybe they will... some day... The Saxophone player has to go... soon...

A new day, a new week, a new beginning of spring, an unexpected rise in temperature. Happy birthday. The last day of Mars, I hear?, not march, just some other constellation thing going on right now. And the universe is in the process of squeezing itself through the little cracks and niches and little gaps between teeth and maybe even the membranes between the brains and the rest of the body. And it is all moving forward, somehow. Projects will be projects and there is always going to be more light in some places and a little less in others. Perhaps. And when i close my eyes there are tiny flashes now and then, and this means that i am still alive and this is a good thing, I guess. Today there was no hot water and no coffee, no internet access from the office. Then a job in London was put on hold for a tiny while, which upset many of us... and yet the world keeps turning... And i think i will leave it at this for now... maybe think a little more later... we never know.

Maybe it is time to take some harder medication. Maybe it is time to get myself a shrink. Maybe it is time to just sleep. Shot The Todd Levin on Saturday, used various little cameras, only natural light... out of the 130 or so digital pictures I shot not even a single one made the cut into even my preview selection. The pictures look fine, they are not bad, but the analogue material looks just so much more interesting. I think I like the little secrets of analogue cameras very much. I think I like it when they fail or almost fail. I like it when they are too tired to deliver the expected result, but they don't say anything, they don't warn, there is no preview screen, no beeps, nothing, they just keep that badly exposed film in their dark bellies until it comes out somewhere, in some fat machine and turns into a dilemma for some exposure metering software... or not even. It is all purely chemical... some of the film did not get to see enough, some of it saw way too much light. Some of the light was completely unpredictable... sometimes the focus point was somewhere in the middle of nowhere, suspended in a place that is completely irrelevant to the picture. Hmm... Slide film feels best right now Fuji Provia 100F and 400F feels really nice. it does. Maybe it is time to sleep... maybe I would like to have a conversation... maybe it is time for some real medication... tea is just not enough... perhaps... we have seen better days... though the weather was really perfect today... oh, and what was the name of that cat?

Not only was the last car of the 1/9 train going uptown packed, it was without any light and had no ventilation. On 5 seats in the best area of the car was a body, a huge man, spread out, his pants pulled down just enough to reveal his entire hairy behind. He snored very loudly. He snored so loudly that I could hear his snore as the train was in motion, packed with commuters, the last car of quiet darkness. It was not a bad thing all together, of course. Taking pictures outside was possible without any unnecessary reflections... and taking pictures inside was somewhat possible, however only in the stations... (can you spot the man?) Oh, he woke up at some point, btw... and asked for the time. SOmebody just told him the time... and he continued his good sleep.

Oh, so this is why I was not able to write a thing here... my head feels like a little mitten around a pulsating little fist that seems to be my collapsed brain. My nose feels as if it were spinning and flashing a red light... my throat feels as if it were a cat stroked into the wrong direction... I will need some rest... will maybe take it a little slower... for now... that's all I can say here... I think... (or I think that I think I think...)

Well, one of the issues I have with this whole "writing down" thing is that I do not remember what I have "written down" here before. If I had chosen to just report on current events, then the media sources would do the sorting out for me. My opinion could swing in just the perfect level of flexibility and I would never run into the issue with me being worried if what I am writing here had been told, many times, much better, by the previous me. I was aware that my supply of shareable ideas is limited... but why does it have to be finite? So I do not want to repeat myself. And I also would not like to retell stories, yet in a much worse mood, as if I were stripping them to look much worse than that shiny last year's model. Then there are the other events I would really like to write about, but they are just so elaborate and big... how am I supposed to write about them without adding yet another few hours to my 36 hour days. (Clearly this was a lie... my days last for as long as your days last, my dear reader...) Oh, and I should stop writing after 22:00 (that's 10PM, for our American friends.) After 22:00 I should maybe just play with a knife, hitting the spaces between my stretched out fingers, over and over again, until I would finally just completely lose something, control, interest, maybe some blood... See, did I ever mention that we used to play with knifes a lot? When we were boys, we would play with knifes a lot. And I mean boys in Poland... which means that I must have started throwing a knife for living when I was about 5. Okay, I did not do it for living, but I spent large amounts of my days playing with a knife, often a folding knife, sometimes some other sort of little knife... always sharp... at least until we stated playing with it. There were different games we played, I remember. I think my favorite had something to do with world domination. World domination and knifes and five year olds does sound about right, doesn't it? We would mark a circle on the dry ground (basically anywhere in front of the building (as the seeds for the grass had probably been used for the party official's private golf course.) We would divide the circle into two halves. (One can do this by drawing a straight line through the circle... oh, and "straight" is more of a negotiable term. The opponents would then throw the knife onto the floor from different positions on their body... and whoever failed to make their knife stick in the ground with the blade, had to be the first one to give up a portion of his land. The person who had the knife first, would throw the knife onto the half of the opponent and then divide the land, expanding their area of influence. (the angle of the line would be determined by the angle in which the blade of the knife stuck in the ground... This would happen until the knife would not fall correctly, in which case the players took turns. Oh, the players tried to protect their land with their bodies, of course. Nobody wanted to see their land divided again and again... one had to remain on their area... until it was too small to stand on with one foot... at which point the defender would be allowed to leave their land (go into exile, I guess)... at which point the other player had to perform a whole series of successful attacks at the little piece of marked territory... again, the knife had to be thrown from various places on the body... the hip, the belt buckle, the shoulders, the tongue, the nose, the top of the head... (at least as far as i remember...) This was probably to symbolize the final struggles before the "liberation..." Once the winner claimed the entire circle, the whole game would begin again... this time with somehow softer soil... clearly this game was really good for the environment. Can you imagine how I felt when I arrived in Germany and the kids were playing with shiny little glass balls, those fancy little marbles?... (No, I was not impressed... actually quite the opposite...) See, but have I told this story several times already?... Has my memory failed me?... have I invented some new unrealistic rules?... I really can't tell... I really do not know... Oh, and nobody ever was injured, at least not when I was present. (I am serious...) well, except for this one single time... this one single time when I threw a little stone... clearly, knifes are much safer than stones... Oh, I still should not write after 22:00... I come up with really strange stuff... and I probably just keep repeating myself... or is it history that keeps repeating itself?... Good night...

Wanted to write something, but I could not, was not able to... so here are some pictures... in no particular order, really... they were just the ones I wanted to post in the next few days... or so... but why keep it back?... there is more... Stories happen anyway... ...

So if I missed the sunrise mass this morning, but celebrate the sunrise dozens of times throughout the year... what could this mean? If I go to places of worship very often, but tend to escape if there is a mass... what does that mean?... did I ever write about this one time when I was "locked" in one of the front seats somewhere downtown and there were people, then a pastor, then an entire mass with me just sitting there, my palms pressed against my eyes?... 45 minutes or so of a rather bizarre experience... mainly an audio experience for me... but what did the others think?... They must have assumed that I was a real "case"... I looked at them afterwards, as they were having good conversations outside of the church... I was "invisible" to them... and maybe it is a good thing... well, they probably used it as a way of protecting themselves from me... the strange man in their midst... and I went away... i actually went away... it was a very odd day... I wanted to be very invisible on this particular day... there were many messages on my answering machine that day... many... progressively angrier messages... I remember picking them up from locations farther and farther away from home... (or is it further?) is there such a thing?... so what about the sunrise?... can I just celebrate it without some of the layers that make me feel trapped?... The sunrise is one of the most beautiful places... can you hear the birds?... I mean... close the eyes... can you see the transformation of everything... and can you hear the birds?... i think there is a sunrise hidden in each and everyone of us... isn't there?

Yet another reflection I was just reminded of... This time it is from a very man made "lake" not very far from here... under the surface are some rare treasures... but aren't there always? Everything appears clean and rather perfectly collected... things appear to be completely still. And maybe they are... maybe this is one of the differences? This one is from a series... a series of man made enclosed surfaces...

the reflection of the city in the reservoir reminded me of this different kind of reflection. I thought i had taken the picture in 2000, but I am notso sure anymore. I like the different organization of lights here... I like how the lights of the buildings appear to be organized in a much simpler way than those on the glowing trees. The reflective surface appears groups some of them... It would obviously not be possible to take this picture again now. At the time when I took it, I was somehow convinced that it was not a shot worth taking twice... hmm...

It is rather silly to write now, after sunset, about a simple walk I took at sunrise. Well, maybe it is not silly at all... maybe I am just not in the possession of the right mindset to write something good about it... (why am I posting then... oh boy...) I somehow do not seem to be very good at stitching pictures together. The little panorama below was actually much wider... oh well... Yes, the sunrise is a very beautiful series of moments to experience outside. It always seems to be this way. The image below "were" taken at the north east corner of the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, facing South West... To the right is the Upper Westside... The Center is Columbus Circle, Hell's Kitchen... further to the left... Midtown... the buildings on the left are on 5th Avenue... What a strange little post...

The first appearance of the acacia trees felt a bit like a miracle. I had just put the seeds that looked like little brown stones into the soil, forgot about them, then a few months later there was a bit of a mini forest of several little trees, one of them almost two feet tall. When I returned from my trip to Europe last September (was it last September?) the trees had been attacked by some little web spinning parasites. (I was told they could have been spider mites) These had built some sort of cocoons in the crowns of the young trees. The dry leaves made me believe that not only were the acacia trees dead, but that they were also just the first ones to be taken over by the very crafty parasites who would then continue and take over the entire minigarden. I cut down all the trees just very closely to the soil, made sure to immediately throw out the infested plants... The pot which used to look like a little forest was turned into the saddest confirmation that I had not the slightest clue what I was doing with my plants. The little stumps, each one thinner than a pencil, looked rather pathetic. I waited for them to wither away, so I could just take them out and give the tiny container with enriched soil a new start. The little trunks did not rot however. They remained very firm in the ground. It was rather strange and not as I imagined it. I tried to pull the largest one out, just to discover that it was firmly holding on to the soil. The tiniest one could be torn out, but it revealed itself as a rather strong root. These were trees I was looking at, I had given them an opportunity to live... then killed them, or at least I could have sworn that I had killed them... Then, a few months ago, one of the "dead" stumps produced a little branch. The branch was not as strong as the original plant, the leaves were not as large, there were fewer of them and they were a bit confused at times how to close for the night and how to open for the day. (The acacia tree leaves do that, except that we do not get to see it, because who would be insane enough to look at leaves of city trees at night...) The new plant was a great surprise to me. Clearly, the tree I thought dead, was now back, it was performing photosynthesis again, it was another "phoenix." I wanted to be a bit better with dealing with it this time. I inspected the leaves to make sure that no parasites would attack the reborn plant. And I also removed one of the leaves, just to allow the little tree to somehow expand into more than one direction. A bit of a bonsai training, or really the most primitive form of it... I am just learning myself here. I took off one of the larger top leaves. I did not throw it away, I just placed it onto the soil, next to its donor plant. I somehow knew that Acacias do not propagate from leaves... I just left it there... and I expected it to dry in maybe two days or so... it should have. It was cut off from nutrients... it was just a simple leaf. The leaf did not die. Not only did the leaf not die, it "behaved"... (am I glad that I am not a scientist, just a naive observer, so I can write that a leaf "behaved" in a certain way...) the leaf "behaved" as if it were still attached to the plant. It remained very green, it closed for the night and it opened nicely for the day. It was rather interesting. And it continued to perform this little dance for several weeks. Months. No decay. None. It was just a leaf, a living, opening and closing leaf. Last week, a new, completely fresh acacia tree grew out of the soil, right next to the living leaf. The tree looked like a little sprout at first, then the two protective leaves opened and between them appeared many little bright acacia leaves... a whole tree, ready for the new season. Wonderful. This happened yesterday... the little sprout became a tiny tree yesterday... and this morning... well, at least I noticed it this morning... this morning the detached leaf died. The detached leaf is now what I expected it to be a few months ago. It is now a crumpled up dry object. It is not going to open or close... it will just become part of the soil... I guess it is my point of view, and my experience of being a human being that allows me to group all these occurrences into one thought. My observations were not part of an experiment, I am not a biologist... maybe the plants are not even acacias. it is just that this strange performance of the leaf, the ever returning life... The realization this morning was a moment of first hand miracle... and unexplained thing happened there, right by my window, in a little plastic pot with some strange mystery plants. The situation felt as if the leaf were summoning a new tree, for weeks and weeks, until the tree actually appeared... the baton had been passed on... life continued... that was it... it was as if the plants were just the representations of a larger idea, as if Life were what I was breeding here, not plants. Life happens here, the plants just illustrate that it does, over time... It felt as if I received a glimpse into something so much bigger than me, much bigger than anything I know... hmm... very odd experience... very interesting and odd... at least for me it was... like a daytime ghost story... no, more than that...

yey, so cool. Check out some of the new "wild posted" posters around New York City. This flashlight, these pliers, the dust mask (not pictured), the heavy walking boots (not pictured.) Nice cross-processing job on these photographs. Pretty looking, clean, clear design. Don't we all wish that people in the World Trade Center had been equipped with these cool looking utensils? Thaaat's what was missing! Oh yeah! Cool looking posters for Ready.gov all over New York City, check. So if fear looks so cool, what does happiness look like and joy? Oops... it was here before, then gone, now here again... A little template to generate your own mini poster. We all know that we will probably need pliers and a flash light. But what about the pet, the comics, the happy meals? Make sure to have those ready too... make your own little reminder and post it here or at home or on your website. I guess this is what these posters are intended for? A friend art director here suggested that we print out pictures of our favorite objects we do not want to miss and paste them into the posters all over the city... I would never do that... but I think the idea is rather nice... isn't it?

The legendary sun came out to play today. It was a glorious day in the streets of the giant wind tunnel called Manhattan. It is so glorious to see the city be at its best, the shiny reflection of itself, repeating itself in the windows and hopes and happy moments and memories. And the moon is going to be powerful again tonight. And I never even imagined that I would ever cry watching Jim Carrey on the silver screen... well, who would have thought. The eternal mind of a spotless sunshine in the city... And Michel Gondry is a genius... but we all knew that, didn't we?... Oh, and I finally realized that I have three ages. I am a 34 year old Polish guy with a serious memory problem, a 23 year old German with an attitude problem and an almost 9 year old american kid who should not be writing anything about anything after it is bedtime, which is about now... well, maybe in a few hours... Why did it take me this long to realize that each language actually carries a new life in itself... they do, give it a shot... or maybe they only do for me, as I like to dive into them as if they were body temperature water, me being jello, maybe... made out of bones and things... And the legendary sun came out to play today. And I yet have to see the legendary grass. And then I will believe that it is really time to smile again... today I cried... and I probably should go visit Lacuna?... (Oh, and did you notice that the daring characters had Polish names?... Did you notice that?)

My High School is almost 400 years old... I graduated form the HoLa in 1989... 15 years ago... and now there is going to be a reunion, a complete get together of the winners, the losers and some of the ones in between... The title of this entry was also the title of the email I received this morning. The date of the reunion has been moved to Saturday, 07/03/04... (what incredibly lucky numbers.) The date has been moved because of some of those who will arrive from "overseas"... there were particular requests... The email also contained a file with the names of those who could not be found... (I obviously had been found, so my information was not distributed...) I do not thing I want to go. I think I will not go. I'm not going. There is not one good thing that could come out of this reunion for me. Whom would I get to see? Those who were more ambitious than me? They were painful at times then and they will be painful again. Will I reconnect with long lost friends? (hardly.) Will there be some embarrassing games? (Very likely.) Do I want to get really nicely jet-lagged for such an event?... I don't think so... So please forgive me friends (and "friends")... I do not think I will be there.. I will just stay here, keep writing, keep working... it is so easy to find me... it is incredibly easy to get in touch with me... let's make tiny, personal, one on one reunions... If you went to school with me and would like to stay in touch... please leave a comment here or send me an email... oh well... (what the heck am I afraid of?) How was your High School / College / Kindergarten Reunion... any positive experiences?... (the comments are now open...)

the window sounds as if it were a sail and we were on the open ocean maybe south of chile somehow. yes it is night. and it is cold outside. "Kwiecien plecien, bo przeplata troche zimy, troche lata"... was the saying I remember remembering many times as a child in Poland... "April is a weaver, for he weaves some winter with a bit of summer"... and so this is very much the case today... this evening... And I would much rather like to be in a completely different place right now... but I am here... and just slowly regaining a certain level of consciousness... I am so very much looking forward to visiting the west coast again... soon, very soon... and it will certainly be incredibly beautiful... it will be like hair, opened up, at a certain point in time, just the right time, always... is this what the clouds are reminding us of?... the moment of complete letting go?... and i realize that i will probably have to rend certain portions of my equipment, will have to have some little timers repaired, so a second on the shutter of my schneider angulon lens does not take three seconds to pass... and i managed to finally buy the "olympic lens" today. it is a little marvel of optical engineering, developed in the early 1930's for the berlin olympics... it is a Carl Zeiss Sonnar 2.8/180... a heavy piece of equipment, solid aluminum, painted black... now still in slovakia, in another place where streets have no names... so strange to be in such different places at the same time... some thoughts are here, some are there... maybe one of the most confusing posts... but maybe it is about weaving some of the warmth with some of the uncertainty of the cold weather... maybe the best thing to do now is to smile and close my eyes and to imagine soft hair... yes, i think i will do just that... soft hair, opening into a cloud of strands, expanding on maybe white sheets, mostly out of focus, except for maybe here... and here... and maybe here as well...

It is easy to spot out of towners even at night, when they curse at taxis with their signs turned to "off duty." There were plenty of these and those tonight. And it is a short night and it is a Saturday night and these are especially challenging. Saturdays are a challenge for most, the mini olympics. Saturdays are a decisive night somehow... there is the Sunday morning, the morning after... maybe that's why... And the projected images in the Australian restaurant were so incredibly distracting, and I could not hear every second word spoken and the drummer sat on my jacket and I would have loved to find out more, about so much, from so many... and it was just too loud... and the party is still going on and I am at home now, with the glowing keyboard and the warm piece of metal on my lap... and the cars on Broadway sound like the waves of a steel ocean hitting the concrete beaches of the sidewalks... and there are little glowing lights in the man made cliffs... and my thoughts are somewhere else right now... and it is quite nice... somehow... really rather nice...

And the camera would now pull away, or the page wold turn to a new chapter and it would show our hero, on a giant foaming horse, riding very quickly, in circles, loops, maybe other geometrical shapes in an enclosed little canyon, dep in the soil somewhere out there. There would be dust and sweat and exhausted, painful noises, the man and the animal almost at the end of their powers... and from time to time, a visitor would come to look at the two, observe them for a little while... maybe even take a little snapshot, maybe tell others about it. Our hero would not stop during the hottest noon hours, and he would not stop at night. An ever ongoing battle with the various distances within the geometric space... pushing this ride to the limits... barely eating barely sleeping, just riding, riding, riding in circles and loops and maybe other geometrical shapes... over and over and over again... What could possibly be the reason for all this?... What could possibly be the reason?

Why, oh why am I awake right now? The city outside does not sleep at all. The busses, the cabs, the cops at the dunkin' donuts. The honking never really stops, the engines keep running... Friday night is the night of excitement. There is a lot going on... but why in my head? Why in my head? I should probably just stop smiling, turn off the light and close my eyes. Good night...

It was a rather packed day at the 2004 Whitney Biennial. A crowd was gathered in front of the wall with the quite brilliant new drawings by Amy Cutler. The artist was giving a brief introduction to her work. I was pleasantly surprised to see her and her work there, as I had fallen in love with two of her pieces about 8 years ago, when she was doing really great little fabric sculptures. They had a really witty sense of humor and this sense of humor now carries on in her work on paper. I am so happy that she is part of the biennial... As the crowd dissolved, I walked up to her and just wanted to make sure that she is the same artist who's work I remembered from 8 years ago... Witold:"Aren't you actually Amy B. Cutler?"... Amy Cutler:"Yes I am. And you are Witold." (I was rather stunned...) Very silly little story, I know... but it turned the at times rather bland experience of the Biennale into something completely different... : )

and it would be nice to be able to just stick out the nose into a very different dimension and to just have a tiny breather... nothing major, just a quick reassurance that things will be okay... Or maybe it is the other way round. Maybe this place here is that more difficult, more viscose, colder, not really the most friendly environment... maybe, after a rather long dive, one will end up in a very different looking place, where gravity is different and the colors and somehow most of the things... hmm... no talking under water, kids... at least for some of us...

Just woke up, just now, and it is 2AM, not 6PM as I had hoped when I went to take a short nap... and I really looked forward to seeing the amazing Elizabeth Harper last night. She performed downtown. And then right after this certainly incredible performance, at 8PM there was How To Kick People the March installment of the series of readings and speakings by the shamelessly intelligent Todd Levin and Bob Powers... So now I do not know how to feel a little happier (Elizabeth Harper's songs are really something and her voice... wow...) or how to kick people... and I am mostly kicking myself and it is after 2am and I will probably end up jet lagged tomorrow... or today?... Maybe now is a good time to travel to see another beautiful sunset I missed today over at Stoink, a barely born new photolog posted by "pyl213", who has an incredible view of sunsets over New Jersey (while others in her building think they have all the fun because their windows face towards Manhattan). I think the blog will document the ever changing look of her sunsets... (the last entry seems very sad... hmm... hope things are okay...) Maybe it is a perfect time to take a peek into the incommon. It is such a beautiful little place... and the brilliant little lists of of things on this also barely created blog remind me of my favorite lists in The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon or maybe in the Max Frisch diaries... (are lists very subtle hints at a brilliant mind?) Incommon is one of the many creations of a brilliant mind behind IN... (sorry for using the word "brilliant" so many times, but it is really late right now...) Or maybe it is time to read the archives of Ben Saunders's blog as he "takes on one of the toughest physical challenges ever; a journey that has so far defeated the world's leading explorers and mountaineers."... Hmm... Not only is this man doing something that no human has ever done before, he makes it look really rather beautiful... (it is a very nice looking site, isn't it?) Or... Hmm... let's see if there is anything good right now on my own personal dream channel... (Sleep, after all, is the poor man's drug of choice...) : )