November 2004 Archives

Happy Thanksgiving. It looks like I have managed to slice myself out of certain things. Long and painful preparation, fast execution. Cold turkey indeed. I will now begin with the thorough reboot process. Please be patient, as we verify all of the system components. There will be testing, there will be reconfiguration, there will be good old reattaching of severed limbs. I am currently in a place very familiar, still. My job now is to transform it into a place that does not contain traces of me. I will then take everything that I will collect here and reapply it into a masonry and wood cavity, several miles from here. I have seven days to complete this operation. I am about to go onto a very serious journey. There have been some very serious mistakes in the past. I have to now very much refocus energies, re-heal, re-activate, re-invent... Please wish me good luck. I really, really need it. This gives me some hope, and so does this. (And no, I do not think I have any deadly disease, except for life, of course... but that's just 100% deadly.)

Well, maybe about NOW would be the time to add an entry to this semi dead space. Things have been more active here than the Parisian rush hour and so there is a slight blockage, several entries that wait to be written. But... there is a great project, currently under way, I was invited to participate and I am on it. Lia invited me to be one of the 24 New Yorkers who create the content in her group MoBlog of 48 hours city madness. You can visit the site, there are some people in this who have much better phones than I do, and better websites, and stuff... The site is: 24in48.org and it is a pretty wild place. It made me try a toasted everything bagel with eggs and cheese, for example... Those who were upset with me because I have not posted a decent picture here for a while, can now see almost every one of my moves on that site... seriously.

To be read standing, and as quickly as only possible. Skipping words is not only permitted but encouraged: The guards were really tiny in the giant room. They were so incredibly reduced in their size by the towering architecture. Millions and millions had been spent to achieve this important effect. The reduction of the guards to almost nothing is an old trick. They might look tiny, my friend, but they are still more powerful than you are, no matter what you have paid to get here. They might look unimportant, but compared to them, dear visitor... you are, well... do you even deserve a name? The uniforms of the guards and their frequent change of stations, make them appear as mere representations of an idea. They are not humans... they are "the guard". No, don't you even think of touching this. Na, step away from that wall, walk up straight, keep moving. Oh, wait, I was not even there. Or was I? I lost the count, really. Maybe I am not able to see the difference between the experienced, the imagined and the yet to be thought of? Did I have a conversation recently with a man who thought of me as a rather curious piece placed in a magical chamber next to procession of little plastic animals? The names of cities he threw at me, I juggled them as well as I possibly could. He looked at the holes in my left sock and I stared right between his eyes and knew that it was easier for me to deal with the names of what he thought were his cities. They were attached to such completely different memories. London: I remember smelling the corners, and they were soaked with urine and oil and probably blood, from the hands of those who sometimes arrive at night and try to move the buildings with their bare hands. Or maybe the hands with the buildings? Paris: If somebody is preparing a hell for me then it is going to look like the streets of this city and I will to be driving around with a giant car, looking for a parking space which I will never, ever, ever find... But on the other hand. Heaven is here as well. This is the city where I understand that it is my job to be not understood, at least not until I buy so much wine that I receive a free embrace from the owner of the little shop on the corner. Oh, this is the worst description of Paris. Berlin: One time only, I think. Me sleeping on the floor at a director's house, the movie was supposed to be about my escape from poland, I had brought my own sleeping bag. Poisoned myself in the traffic jam going home. Threw up for days, until the blood vessels around my eyes started bothering me. Ich bin kein Berliner. Rome: Never bin to. Nancy: It rains, there is fighting. The city is beautiful and the food is good, but it does not soak up screams well enough. At least the walls in the hotel are upholstered. Things bounce off the blue hunting scenes on the ornate fabric. Not much breaks. Munich: I am stretching on a giant sofa, fingering through a picture book of Herb Ritts black and white nudes. In the air some perversely sweet parfume. Obsession, perhaps? Insanity maybe. Hamburg: We leave the door of the van open. On the back seat about $50,000 of video equipment. The door remains so, until we return, the next morning. Hamburgers do not give a damn about other people's stuff. I spend the night on the floor next to a gigantic Anna Oppermann piece. Maybe it was not so big, but I remember it being giant, overwhelming, there, in the place where it had been created, unfinished... These are my cities, among others, they will never be visited this way... and also this sacred place here, it is not really entered. I feel like a really tiny guard now. I am really really tiny, yes, I know... but I feel like I have to protect the treasures of this room. And so I do. I mightily move around the toes in my sock. So they come forward and look dangerous, like little weapons. I could be like a fighting rooster (or are these called "fighting cock"?) Oh and I wear a uniform as well. I am the idea of the man dressed in a blue shirt, black pants and those ridiculous socks. Wohoa... wait a second. What am I thinking? I keep forgetting that I am part of the display. Even a most outrageous behaviour would only better define my crazy nature. My jumping of any kind would just be a confirmation, a good night story to scare some very bored child. A few years form now. I manage to collapse, eventually, turn myself into what I like being most, a simple, invisible thought, one that can just do outrageous things without even being noticed in any way. As simple as that. And I love cold nights. And I love gingko trees who guard treasures. I love when birds land on the water while there is a wind that makes hair a curtain. I love piercing looks that say so much, so much, so very much. I love the cup being held up to a smile. And I love a smile that does not even require lips because it glows from shy eyes. New York: All of the above, and that is not even the beginning of things. And it is so ridiculously late again. And I will probably suffer horribly tomorrow, when I will be in a car for two hours being driven out to a special meeting out of state. Out of state of what? Okay... reading can slow down now. Calm. Quiet. Good night. stop.

ran out of words the other day. the sentences do not make sense as they used to. there is not enough time to shape paragraphs. i am connected. i can receive and send emails while on the go. everywhere, as long as mostly above ground. and what is it that i have to say? exactly that. i am now connected. i can receive emails via my pocket. and i can reply to them in brief notes about me being completely connected... and having no time left to experience anything but the sensation of being connected. i am going to sleep now. this is a bit much. tomorrow frightens me. stay in touch. (don’t spam.)

There are places in New York that feel as if they were the refuge for the spirit of the city. This is where New York still feels like it should, where the stores are owned by people, where the customers are people too... where things still happen as if New York were the tiniest, friendliest little multimillion metropolis. Cozy indeed. Walked from Grand Army Plaza all the way to the terrace area and it felt very nice. It felt very human size. Very real. -- Eveline in the diner on 7th avenue had breakfast with her friend. Eveline needed a device to hear her very loud voice and her white walking stick showed clearly that she was blind. But Eveline was funny. She wore a t-shirt, very much stretched in certain places, that just said: Stay in Touch... with braille subtitles. As if it were a t-shirt for the blind. Well, yes. Her friend could barely see through his incredibly heavy glasses. Eveline paid. The bill in her hand folded in a special way to mark the denomination. -- It was so incredibly cold and windy today. It will get worse... I just know it... Yes, it just gets really cold in New York.

Lush shades of pink and nearly translucent white, set in shapes held together by thin membranes. Layers upon layers, upon layers of them. Moving. Majestically. Golden backdrops. The smell of freshly burned leaves suspended in cold air. Fruit. Very, very ripe fruit. far away. Moist reflective surfaces. -- the hand in my left pocket is holding on to an object that has by now taken on an almost feverish temperature. I am waiting for it to vibrate. It will not. Not in the next 10 minutes. -- On the train. Shielded. Radio signals do not penetrate the shell. Are we flying? These are short flights through a permanent night. Turbulences synchronize the passengers. The train is a group meditation temple for those with very short attention spans. -- my lips stopped bleeding. for now. good balm. -- "I keep visiting your blog, though the digital camera seems to have devoured the drawings. How come people love to just push buttons instead of taking their time to guide a pencil along a not yet existant line?" -- "do you think everything will be good?" "everything will be." "good?" "neither good nor bad... it just will be." -- It will... be... -- "You know on the plane, they tell you to put on your mask first and then to tend to your child. Think about that." -- be... and it will... -- neither bad, nor good... just here... -- pushing buttons only makes sense when there is a real response, an interactive, immersive experience. maybe... what do we look like to machines we operate? Does my computer think that I am a finger at a time? Or that I am one finger? Maybe two? Two really fast fingers? What if the entire world were built in a way that one could only press one key at a time? How silly to have a thing that is a mouse pointer. -- the injuries are worse again. as if the cycle were appear to be nearing another bottom... -- spans attention very short temple meditation group a train of thought reversed? the thoughts are turbulent and act as odd passengers on a journey backwards into the invisible night. as if one were a backwards flying, shielded being, often deaf and blind to the signals of the ether... can we train ourselves to listen better? it might take some real time... -- my right hand has folded a twenty dollar bill in my pocket. i can not see the result, but i have seen these images over and over again. they still make me tremble. temperature? cold sweat? are ten minutes over? can we talk? -- Reflections of suspended moistness in far away surfaces. Clouds really, hanging over the city like very ripe fruit. Perhaps smoke, from the freshly turned leaves. The scent is such an intoxicating memory of childhood. The glittering air of the longer mornings and evenings is golden, majestic, moving slowly. As i am tearing off layers upon layers upon layers, to get to the core of things and myself, by myself, so my universe can collapse in some ways, so it becomes possible to slip through the thin membranes of uncertainty. and back into a place where... Lush shades of pink and nearly translucent white, set in shapes held together by thin membranes. which i would love to whisper to, i kniht.

The little water in the freezer tasted slightly flaky and light. It was almost as if it had been watered down, mixed, made into a theater version of itself. The headache in the morning is still the real deal, so maybe it was just the illusion of lightness after another oddly shoehorned day. A glass of real water in the morning should soften some of the effects. Colors look vibrant again. The air is cold. There are sounds from the street. The consciousness is coming back. Or so I hope. But it is not consciousness I am looking for right now, it is the ability to see a larger picture. Carrying a horse on my back is not right. The sunrises are longer, they last half a day almost, then the sunsets ease in, until the long cold nights blow those daring to be awake into their houses. Or maybe make them stay at the office? The Broadway sign is brightly illuminated now, and so is the building breath rising from the air conditioning on the Chase branch across the street. The tomato plant is now over 40 inches tall now. A giant living thing that smells unpleasant when touched and that has not produced anything but itself so far. Hmm. I do feel like we are somehow related. Except that the plant has a very clear vision of where it is going. Bold and wicked tomato plant. It is going to soon carry real fruit. I dream of floating balloons. I would love to just do that. Elevate a thin thought to become one of those clouds, somewhere over the city. Maybe many of those. Something that really can not be accomplished in the current contraption. Ugh. Crawled into bed again. The few hours of sleep I had given myself to recover were clearly not enough. I will watch today through a thick film of mental vaseline. Thoughts are all over the place... and oh yes... there were thoughts about an old story... yesterday, I think?

The past week was much more demanding than I had anticipated. I thought to maybe have time to explore some of San Francisco while there, but no, most of the time was spent in a conference room, coming up with ideas, throwing them at people in the room. The project was very nice but it really demanded to much of my thinking and feeling that i was not able to write anything here at all. Amazing. I still got to see some of San Francisco, of course. I have the feeling that the city is far too polite for my taste. Maybe it was because I spent my days and nights in midtown, but I always had the feeling as if the streets were far too wide and the buildings really a backdrop. I do not think I will be moving to San Francisco any time soon. Even though the weather looks tempting and some of the friendliest people I know live there. I am glad to be back in New York... though it might take some time for my brain to arrive here as well. I hear the thinking never takes the plane... it always walks... (but maybe only to Mecca?) On a different note... Spam activity to this site has increased to levels that are barely acceptable. I am not sure if it is only me, or if everybody around here also gets hit by the strangest comment spam. I have blacklist and I use IP banning... but still, my log looks like a crazy battlefield.

So here I am, on the other side of the continent. I will be here in San Francisco all of this week. There probably will not be too much time to see anything in the city, as this is going to be a very serious work week. Let's hope for the best. The bay does look beautiful this morning.