Short glimpses into a brief walk on the edge of Central Park yesterday. What could be the name of the strange fruit? The air outside has the perfect soupy thickness. I could probably create galactic swirls in it. Or maybe just pour colored air into it, make thick clouds, growing, pouring between buildings, into windows, through cracks in floors, all the way to the basements, the soil, the bedrock, beyond? -- Central Park looked as if it were painted onto a freshly wetted sheet of paper. The rocks protruding between the leaf covered grass: pitch black, lacking all features of three dimensional objects. With their own perfect shadows, they were the pure amplifiers for the surrounding hues. The trunks of trees seemed to also be players in this game. Black carriers of gold, red, orange, and still some greenish green. All elevated into the thick grey soup of the air. Even the youngest ones could play skyscrapers. A group of black birds tried to have a feast on new seeds released by a nearby shrub. The heads and the beaks of black birds were just not created for slippery hard-shelled hazelnuts. A bird would pick up one of the round objects half the size of his head, try to trick it into its throat, only to discover that the seed was too big and the beak was far too slippery as well. The bird's beak became a nut thrusting device. The object would fly a few inches ahead of the bird, the animal would then rediscover the found food, try to repeat the impossible task of swallowing the uncracked nut just to thrust it again, and again, and again. Some of the birds tried to do something with their thin red feet. Some tried pecking the nut. Most were playing beak-ball. On a little patch of freshly touched ground not far from the birds, some mysterious fruit: Bright green caricatures of grapefruits, a sticky sap sweating out of the sometimes hairy pores. The one I picked up as if it were an object from a crime scene investigation, might weight about a pound. It is about the size of a large grapefruit. It looks so incredibly alien. The logic of the texture on its surface seems beyond what one could dare to understand. Somebody must have kicked one on the ground as it was opened, empty inside, as if the skin itself were an arrangement of green mutations between pomegranate seeds and corn, made into an orange without fruit flesh. The object smells a bit like a citrus fruit... I am intrigued... -- The moisture of the planet ascends through the bedrock, the soil, maybe basements. Swirls of complexly mixed air dance in ever new formations around grateful trees and clueless humans. Thick clouds create a perfectly soupy thickness outside, letting even the youngest ones be skyscrapers.

he just wanted to crawl between the layers of asphalt, generate a warmth and find more warmth in return. It was a very easy dream really... well, there were layers to it, of course. the warmth was one felt by the skin, and there was also one felt by the heart. The head liked to be warm as well. And the inside of the mouth, the words whispered, they also melted, onto mouths and hands and more than that. -- he was seemingly fascinated by the edge of the cherry colored table. it was not a straight edge, commonly found in such furniture. the edge was shaped to be protruding, roundish, as if the table wanted to look larger than it actually was. Sheets filled with notes and various lines and symbols began to cover the empty areas of the table. several family members walked in, out, came in again, just to be soon dismissed. -- His father told him one of his verbal illustrations:"Imagine two people play chess. One keeps winning. Once, twice, ten times. Eventually he will grow sick of winning. The game has to have some balance. There should be some sort of interesting give and take. If there is none, why play?" He did not have to think for long:"No, it is actually much more frustrating. I would like to maybe play chess, but I have to explain the rules first, explain each figure on the board, I have to then set up the pieces, just to be told that they should not be set up in this particular way. There are conversations about it, I eventually give in. We end up with a board on which the figures stand around in some strange formation determined by negotiations and compromise. This is when the sun sets, the day ends and so the 'game' needs to be finished. The pieces need to be taken off the board. The board returns to being a door mat. The same procedure is then repeated day after day after day. It is more like that." Father:"You know what, lions should spend time with lions. Fish should spend time with fish." He:"Even if a rabbit tries really hard to find his love for hunting, he will end up eaten by the dogs." Father:"What are you talking about?" He:"I don't know anymore. This game of chess is driving me nuts." -- One of the tomato plants is now a yard and a half in height. I am worried about the lime tree. I might have injured it too much, too quickly. Bonsai training gone wrong? The soil in my little forrest is starting to be covered with tiny moss flowers. I hope I manage to let the avocados survive. Will any one of the 13 pomegranates make it? I have received a precious jade plant today. The leaves are almost the size of my inner palm. They are red. The plant is heart shaped. It is beautiful. -- A helicopter just illuminated the buildings across broadway. I think it is time to go to sleep. Tomorrow will be very serious. Two flights, several conversations. Buildings in which no private phones will be allowed. I better get some rest... There, the helicopter is coming back. I am so desperately looking for shelter. It is becoming less and less funny.

"You know, you should not say how you feel. You should write a scene in which the viewers see how you feel. That's just much more impactful, no?" She was picking up some cash from the ATM and giving a friend some cell-phoned advice at the same time. Or should I have not said that? Okay, once again. "You know, you should not say how you feel. You should write a scene in which the viewers see how you feel. That's just much more impactful, no?" The inside of the well lit ATM area of the bank felt like a perfect backdrop for a dialogue about the dialogue of dialogue. Better. ... My most beautiful reoccurring dream is of scents and warmth and sounds and other indescribable sensations all between the layers of what could maybe be very soft asphalt. Thin, warm, dark grey sheets, maybe under water? A school of fish intrigued and yet not fooled by a worm simulator on a hook. The ocean hits the shore with ever new waves in ever varying colors. Giant jellyfish. Many. With the eyes closed, Paris appears to be incredibly close. One can enter the Louvre through a tiny side entrance not commonly known to the masses of international tourists winding their way towards the security check of the Nam Jun Paik 666 glas panel pyramide. Is this fact true at all? Could one reenact the excitement of Victoria and Albert meeting the eyes for the first time? Maybe both should be visited. I hear there is a subway between one and the other. Wanna go? ... My grandmother did not use bricks to get her job. She used weights. The heaviest ones available in the house. I remember her telling me the story long before her faced collapsed to that soft and sweet something she was even when the water finally reached her lungs. She had told me of weights. I had somehow turned them into bricks. Bricks would not have worked. Bricks would have been too light. I am not even sure if I ever told the story here. My grandmother having to work because of her children and her freshly crippled husband. She was so underweight that she would not have been permitted to work in the foundry... the examining physicist had a somewhat twisted way of creating his truth. He would not just write a false number in his registration sheet as that would have been illegal. He would make my grandmother try to weigh herself in her clothes, then even her heaviest coat. When even this did not work, he suggested my grandmother eat more... her not having anything to eat really (and this being the reason why she had to go get a job in the foundry) she soon returned to the same doctor, about 20 pounds heavier... steel weight gained in pockets. It was the weight of metal she brought with her that would make it legal for her to lift heavy metal. It was difficult for me to understand how my grandmother could have ever been underweight and definitely undernourished. When I met her, falling out of the haze of being an infant, the underweight her existed only on tiny crumbling photographs... I loved her so much. I would compare her walk to that of a duck. My first attempts at compliments were obviously very crude. My grandmother would ask me very strange questions about my parents' relationship. Her interrogations were an interesting peephole into the future of relationships in general. ... I will now close my eyes and find myself near the ocean, between layers of anthracite asphalt, near a school of fish, in a most beautiful spot. And I will be perfectly fine. I hope... Have not slept much in the last few days. The thoughts in my head are slowly turning nonverbal. I look at things, but I do not see them. I listen to sounds and words, but I don't hear them. Things are falling appart... Books are turning into pages filled with sentences made of words containing letter after letter after letter after letter. Shapes which need to be deciphered, glued together, connected, and then... no... something major needs to happen here soon. It is not that I do not see the forrest because I am looking at trees. It is that I do not seem to regain the ability to even see trees, because I am trying to see through bark... Certain things will probably take a bit of time. I hope to be able to find some help in an early monday morning conversation with myself. I crave to spend the evenings on a sofa, overlooking a corner filled with fresh air. And all the colors of the known emotional universe. ... "You know, you should not say how you feel. You should write a scene in which the viewers see how you feel. That's just much more impactful, no?" I think I have been trying to do that quite openly for many, many years now. "You know, you should not say how you feel. You should just get the f*ck out the the business of writing plays altogether. You have not the slightest clue what you are doing, my friend. Get out of it, as long as you still can. This might very well be your last chance. Get the f*ck out." yeah. that's better.

walking actually in the street, walking, cold hands on the corner of west third and 6th. look, absolutely no wires in sight. typing in the palm of my hand, sending it out of my right jacket-pocket. for the first time this way. definitely not for the last. finally able to do this. the world is even tinier now... wow.. i will explain the full setup later. this is just a first test... ; ) ...

another friday night. She emerged herself in the warm and milky water until hands and her knees became islands in an enamel bay. She could see a wall of flowers from here. They were not very far. The possibility of showers was there... well, one shower at least... The unpleasant sensation she had the entire day would soon give way to a soothing warmth and calm. She would soon find herself in a place where she could spend more time thinking... maybe a tiny bit less feeling... or would she spend more time feeling, and less thinking? She did not know the difference right now, and she had the feeling that it was better this way. Outside, the night was just as cloudy. The city emerged in a milky substance, much thinner of course than the friday night bath, but more breathable, perhaps? Lucy was using her good hand to fish for bottles in the tub filled with icy water. Soon there would be the usual visitors at the bar. Some of them speaking Polish. Others not quite admitting their ability to do so. The milky substance was warm and soothing. The evening would be a very calm one. For some... maybe no rain would fall... but a drop or two would fall... salty raindrops. It might be a good idea to just do something to forget this evening actually exists. Maybe somebody would come out and find him at Lucy's?... Impossible is nothing.

This morning I closed my eyes and immediately found myself on a full train going south to a place I have never had a chance to visit. The train car was packed. I was sandwiched between a man with a single eyebrow and a very loud voice and a very sweet looking woman, wearing glasses. It was as if I had been placed between two extremes. On one side of me was this overbearing bilingual guy, a bit of a giant really. On the other side, the one by the window, this woman, her hair incredible, her skin of a transparence that probably made me blush. I pretended to look out of the window. I tried to inhale as quietly as possible, for as long as possible. The tiny particles that entered my body seemed to be of the supreme kind, the ones that turned the capillaries in my fingertips into tingling messengers of happiness. This was quite obviously an extraordinary woman. It appeared as if she had been placed into this very seat by my most inner wishful thinking. I could not resist her presence. In my daydream, I began to daydream. She and I were outside of the train car now, levitating in the warm breeze, sitting close to each other. Our speed had not changed, but the sensations have been further modified. The soundtrack to this experience appeared to be the recording of crickets and water, somewhere far away. I still wanted to pretend that I was looking out the window, but there were no windows, no train car, no tracks even now... all gone... now... I just knew that we were heading in the right direction... but how did I know? I did not know. "Look", I tried to start the conversation. "May I introduce you to the sky and the horizon? They are my long time friends. I love them dearly, though I know that we will only be able to meet once I will be no longer myself. They are the closest, dearest friends and the most distant ones at the same time. I would like you to meet them. And I would like to introduce you to them... wait a second... how... wait... wait..." She turned to me in a way that somehow showed that she had been completely aware of my presence: "and so?," she asked... I opened my eyes and found myself in a large dark conference room during a meeting, in a plastic chair, my name tag on the table in front of me. Two folders with markings and highlighted text, two cups of coffee, a bottle of water, pens, markers, a legal pad. My writing on it. I closed my eyes again. darkness. I closed them again. darkness. I opened my eyes. darkness. Who was that guy with the single brow?

One more overheard conversation in an elevator going down, in 45 Main Street, in Dumbo, Brooklyn, New York...

How a visit to dumbo turns into yet another lesson about life in water and life and water... I used to be a very pale vegetarian, yet still one who would go to steak houses to have lunch. Dumbo has opened its doors. The ones that probably mattered most were studio doors, of course. I did not know what to expect of the arts festival until I exited the very packed F train at the York street station. There were crowds of people down Jay Street, there were crowds on Front, crowds at the entrances to warehouses. I arrived at around 4:30 or so, and with very little time left in the day, I had to focus my visit: enter, see, find. The menue in a steak house can easily look like one single dish. Having particular allergies can make the best stocked supermarket appear empty. The largest city, packed with humans, can feel very much like a desert when seen through the eyes of a lonely immigrant. My first stop was 68 Jay Street, Studio 821, Melissa Zexter. The map suggests that Zexter is a multi media artist as well as a photographer. Indeed, one part of her multi media layers are photographs of what I remember being suburban landscapes and maybe even people. The more linear medium used in connection with the photographs is thread, sawn through the images, thread shaping into flowers and lines and various patterns. The connection between image and the treaded drawing works well. Here are some examples. Because of the thread actually penetrating the surface, the density of the drawing can not go as far as the ink on photograph explosions by Sebastiaan Bremer, of course, but maybe that�s actually quite good. I enjoyed the pieces I saw very much. I did not stay long, time was running out. - Hey, look, there is Jen coming from the station. - this means the day is almost over. She wanted to come by with Anne. - eeew, who are these guys with them? - oh, Grandpas? Just some new catch. So f*cking ironic. The next stop on my list happened to be in the same building. Studio 617, Marianne McCarthy. Photography and Multimedia. The photographs here were larger, though seemingly taken of completely controlled, or even created environments. I remember a beach umbrella, a chair. I remember them being possibly not really what they seemed... I should have probably paid more attention. The artist was busy. The sculptor, draftswoman with whom she shares the studio was not even there, but here was the work that caught my attention: Laura McCallum seems to be working in the field of sculptural cartography, three dimensional drawings, elevation lines, color codes. (And she creates great work doing that, I think.) Then there are some colorfully lush semi-sculptures, valleys cut into what seems to be pages of thick-paper-books. As if some amazing force had harvested the material in a very intelligent way and in the process discovered that somebody before had also had a good time creating sediment after sediment after sediment. A purposeful process. The results can definitely not be understood by looking at them as jpegs, though, here is an example and here. Nearby, on tables, organic objects, often arranged into primary dual symmetries, held in their space my flat vanes of thread?, maybe rubber? The colors here softer? At least as far as I remember. I am very intrigued. - do you want to draw something into Laura's book? - daada - here, nice - daaa daaaaaaa - excuse me, young lady, would you mind if I borrow your pen? - the pen - pen - yes, give the man the pen. - pen - thank you - say you're welcome - daa daaaaa Next stop, Matt Dojny's studio (702). In the middle of the floor is a black circle in which black colored clay animals appear to have been captured making a last attempt of brokering a deal with weapons and toys and other hand sized objects. Everything within the circle is pitched. Studio visitors have to stay close to the walls, out of the giant center, not to disturb the magical gathering. Work on the walls appears to use one very particular kind of square material. Some paintings by the windows are arranged like fourteen inch records in a second hand store. A visitor browses the drawn and painted covers. Was there music, perhaps? A group of people placed themselves under a fully stocked loft near the entrance. I do not stay long. I take some postcards. They are very amazingly printed, the drawing on them slightly raised off the semi glossy paper. The piece is called "After the Afterlife." I am glad I got one, or three... And I go on. - so I tell him that this is like, pseudo real or something? and he is like...? - he is such a jerk. - yeah?, i mean, please?, like we did not see that? My next and last stop happens to be in a different building. 45 Main Street, is above the West Elm store, a place where the elevators were designed by somebody who loves very low lighting and multicolored lamps trapped in plexi glass rods attached to the walls at odd angles. Two people with a giant heavy desk leave the elevator as I enter. I follow the signs with drawings of a dog shooting a rifle. I find a sign: "Hunting Party at 4:00" this is the expansive studio of Polish born Dutch artist Monika Zarzeczna. The rooms here have very high ceilings, there are no windows to disturb the industrial strength neon light. I enter the location and am greeted by what appears to be temple gods, staring into the room from larger than life sheets of unrolled paper. Some drawings did not make it to the wall. They remain rolled up, on the floor. Two are half unrolled. The faces of what appear to be portraits of certain types, rather than actual people, are drawn with very precisely set multiple lines of pencil. All wear clothing which is strong in color, often decorated with high contrast ornamentation which completely ignores the presence of a body. Paintings? Drawings? Painted drawings? Drawn paintings? I find the work very interesting. The energy is very intriguing. While in many other studios the results felt as if they were barely burning candles surrounded by polished magnifying glasses, the light here is an anti airplane search light, the glass taped shut in a way that allows only for a soft glow to leave the device. I speak with Monika, I shake hands with her husband. We speak, in Polish, about how poor Polish must be. She left when she was seven. I left at eleven. I somehow have the feeling she left after me... I see more drawings, smaller ones, drawn on thirty year old paper that refused to fall apart completely, even though it was stored in a drawer, somewhere in Poland. (I forget to ask where.) We admit to each other how important it was in our lives that each one of us left Poland at an early age, we admit to each other a certain level of self imposed restraint, we admit to each other how important it was for each one of us to at some point in our lives to meet Amy Cutler. I am told that the studio space will soon be taken over by West Elm for storage. Monika will be looking for a new studio by the end of the year. I acknowledge that it might be difficult to find a place large enough to continue with her monumental drawings. "Ja jestem jak zlota rybka," she says, "ja sie potrafie dopasowac to mojego akwarium." (I am like a goldfish, I have the ability to adjust to the size of my fish-tank.) I feel as if she had just told me the message I had been trying to find for months now. Just a few minutes later I am a simple observer again. Friends arrive with some liquor. They seems to be band members of a concert just passed. They joke and are amazed about the now missing giant table. "These people just had to have it. They ordered a car service. But the car service never called back. They probably are still outside, waiting for the car? Is it raining?" I have seen everything I wanted to see. I have not seen everything I hoped to see. I feel calm. I am done. I am ready to leave. I leave the room, I leave the floor, I leave the building, I leave some money at starbucks, I leave some words, here, there, I leave dumbo, in the right direction. I do not really leave. I am like an octopus. I have the ability to adjust to ...anything... The menue of a steak house looks like a single dish, when seen with the eyes of a pale and uninformed vegetarian. The biggest city can appear like a desert... It is getting colder these days. drawing � monika zarzeczna

A rough sketch of an entry, about overwhelming sadness, a burned cat, and that phone that made me realize that I am very alone. I remember walking home on an autumn afternoon in 1974 perhaps, and feeling that I was the most unfortunate boy on earth. It was very clear to me that I had no chance to get anywhere, I felt completely abandoned, it was really an incredibly overwhelmingly sad feeling. There was not a tiny piece of hope left in me. I cried. Though I cried a lot and often then. I tend to combine this seemingly random memory of me walking home crying from pure desperation with the one of seeing a cat that had survived being set on fire. The cat had only patches of green fur left on its body also the tail was half torn off, the ending dark red, a part of a bone sticking out of the dried and shriveled skin. The animal avoided me. Clearly it had not been tortured by other cats. I remember the exact location where all these thoughts collapsed over my head. Maybe the memories are combined because they were triggered near the same building, just a block away from Wielkopolska Street, 17, where we lived. There were no mistreated animals here today, the city was New York, it is 30 years later, but the overwhelming feeling of helplessness was on the edge of more I could possibly handle. Maybe what I am feeling is the presence of a negative force?... Maybe I am soaking up some crazy horrible something? I am feeling as if I were in the absolutely wrong place right now. Completely wrong. All wrong. Yes, about as bad as it felt when I saw that cat. Maybe some of the feelings that flow through me are not even my own?... Maybe I am just like a detector of forces?... That would be a really horrible discovery.

... the sky just went from pitch to black. what looks like a little toy helicopter is barely audible through the noise made by the street outside. here it is again, not as far as before, the chopping is a bit clearer now. blinking lights, a slow moving noise maker waiting for the sun to arrive from across the ocean. and... gone... where... where... where?...

Tannenbaum-Leichenschaendung The little fir is dead. I clearly over-watered the little guy. The droopy new growth turned from bright green to green to brownish green yesterday. I took my knife, put on rubber gloves, pulled out my butcher's pan and pulled the corps out into the open. Half of the roots just stayed in the pot in with the dripping-wet soil. I had clearly drowned the poor tree. All I could do now was to try some ad-hoc bonsai training, make the dead thing look good, for the last few weeks of its life. (Or the first few weeks of its death.) I cut off all the lower branches, I shaped the thing until it looked like a pathetic miniature version of a high altitude mountain fir. I then began to cut off the rotten the roots. My intuition somehow told me that a smaller root system would be only able to support a smaller tree. I cut some of the injured roots, some of those that looked as if they were nerves torn bare, tangens, in the open now, like bright wires stripped of their protection. It was then that I came across the spiral. It was this lump at the base of the tree, right under the surface of the soil. The spiral looked like one of those energy saving light-bulbs. The winding was much tighter though. The main root of the little fir was wound up into a very tight spiral, incredibly tight, like a single fingered fist, bare knuckles, ready to punch, like the tight knot on an executioners noose, except that the rope was the one to be executed. And the "rope" here was the now dead tree. I should have thought of that before. The tree might have been bred in a very tight cup in the first moments of its life perhaps? Had it been somehow made to grow quicker as its roots had been forced to take as little space as florally possible? It felt as if the little tree had been bred to just live a quick, effective, bright life... and then somehow destined to suffocate itself on its unnaturally wound up root a few months later? Was the tree equipped with a self destructive mechanism designed to kill it just before the return of the tree shopping season? I clearly drowned the tree. It was a perfectly good tree. It could have grown into a giant.. had I not drowned it... I then went on to killing some tomatos... not on purpose, of course... but many died... My father only told me the story of the two seeds today. The seed that did not want to crawl into the rotten dirt, the one that felt quite happy with the surface, the temperature, the good view... the seed that was worried what would happen to it if it had to push itself to grow roots, to push tiny leaves towards the surface... This seed was eaten by a stupid chicken... The other seed... the one that went through the trouble of sacrificing itself, the one that exploded in the dark moist dirt below the leafy surface, that was the one that ended up as something worth while... as... maybe even a tree, producing new seeds... I think my mind is going in spirals towards the rotten bottom of a tiny flower pot. enough. Good night.

pretty simply elaborate things... ...

pretty elaborately simple things... A dress a wearable pocket a river an island a plowed expansive field There is a beginning and there is an ending and they are both here for all of us to see, or so we think, for now Almost everywhere What appears to be beginning and the ending and the in-between are now stripped of the context of parallel conversations television shows imagined next steps the joy of knowing where things are moving in the right direction... And yet there is much more... What could have been travels into ecstatic landscapes of very private self love are now recorded to be flat probably soft blankets little storage devices for mind masturbation They are now ready to be wrapped around the bodies of those who will complete the phantasy. A dress will be protected at first and wrapped and carried and brought to a private place where it will be looked at touched exposed to sounds touched again moved touched again seen incredibly clearly then wrapped and protected again perhaps for later? It will find itself on the table in front of someone who will finally bring the work to a climax following its and their own winding ways. and... She will not even know it but she will be there the mother right there visible and imagined parts of her will flicker before the heavy breather's inner eye. The wearable pocket will some day be looked at in a laboratory the back of it will carry the markings of many of those who will have added themselves in a series of private rituals which will have allowed them to imagine themselves as the finalizing partners in a stored act of the self loving mother Elaborate strands of information will be soaked into elaborate strands of information finally united over and over and over again Over generations perhaps until some of the molecules completely forget until the pocket finds itself in a laboratory where its back will be discovered where information will not be shared where preparations will be made to put it into a glas casket. From then on, groups of children, will be shown, to it, inspired, to make their own, little innocent creations. The island the river the plowed expansive field will perhaps leave markings on the backs of placeholder bodies perhaps more innocent and naive than the the one of the landscape creator One more ecstatic moment in the chain of moments for someone who creates by arranging rare creations And the mother of it all will perhaps never know or understand She will probably never realize that she is brought into rooms with those who love her work so they can refresh their fragile slowly failing memories so they can store new images to flicker before their eyes when they go home to have a little more of her in private... and there will be recordings of most of the activities... and some will be very public...

About a very subtle and soft ring of dust, drawn onto an index finger using a subway train, ready to leave the station. As well as the idea of genetic code left on the glass... and about eating dust. He stood on the platform for a little while, staring at the back lights of the train disappearing into the tunnel. The flow of warm air dragged by the last car gave him a last pat on the back, there was a screech generated by metal wheels on metal tracks, then something called silence: The noise of the air conditioning, the whispers of a couple passing by, the sound of a metal buckle hitting another metal buckle, step after step after step. Somebody was wearing one of those buckled leather jackets. Those who had arrived with the train were now leaving the station. He looked at his hands. At the very tip of his indexfinger was a black circle. A black circle drawn with dust. Just minutes ago he used the train window to draw a circle onto his index finger. A gigantic train, several cars, packed with people, now moving farther and farther away from him had been used to be a special device to draw a tiny circle of dust onto his finger. The circle was not perfect, of course. It was actually only approximately a circle. But wow. Tons of steel, people, glass, engines, electricity, light, a schedule. A tiny, shy ring of dust. Wow... He opened the palm of his other hand and tried to draw a little heart. It almost worked. Meanwhile, a few stations away, the outside of the train rushed by at the same speed, with the same noise, on the same schedule. The train utterly unimpressed by the dust given away by the window. Completely ignorant to the shape shape on the window where a layer of dust had been replaced by a thinnest layer of water repellent DNA carrying material. One could, maybe, from a very specific angle, from a very particular seat, in this very particular last car of the train. One could maybe see a very specific message now. The train would soon leave the tunnel. Then the light of the city would play in special ways with the symbol on the glass... If it rained, the water of the rain would avoid the shape. There would be twirls and drops and other constellation of water, but the shape itself would remain untouched. He sat down in the wrong end of the platform and waited for the train going into the opposite direction. Soon he and the circle on his index finger would rush through a tunnel, made out of other intentions, by people long gone, who might somehow be contained in the water that will not enter the symbol, at least not for a little while. At least not for a little while... It would be perceived as dumb if he licked the ring off his index finger. Yet on the other hand it was completely normal for him to inhale the exactly same kind of dust, day in day out, in a much less meaningful way. Why is that?

About the moments lost and those found between the ones that might be both, or maybe neither. (Yes, this is a reused title, but it means something very different today...) I sometimes wonder if rivers have lanes. I guess they do. Rivers are like water highways. The water travels at different speeds, dependent at where it happend to flow in the half pipe towards the ocean. Some water particles on the side, near the shore, sometimes just hang out, swirl around, are parked, quiet. They are the observers, they are the ones who play softly with the plants, perhaps? Some of the water deeper in the river bed probably turns over boulder after boulder, creating sand and pebbles and other exciting round things. Sometimes a highway could be an ocean. I like smart particles. Supreme smart particles are my favorite. They are the ones that define the flow of things. I like when the tiny particles change their mind. I like the glow. I like the flow. I like the unpredictable connection of things. All one organism. A river is just a very brief manifestation of something much bigger. Everything is everything. All at the same time. How long does it take for a water molecule to get from the source to the ocean? My feeling is that the chances of this actually happening at all are incredibly slim. Yes, we see the river and we make the assumption that the water from the source pours into the ocean, but this would only happen if the river were a completely closed pipe. And maybe not even then. The water that makes it into the ocean is a very often transformed, evaporated, refilled, reinvented river. What seems to survive is the motion, the move in one particular direction. But even this direction is only clear when seen from a very particular angle. (Which really tends to change...) No man steps twice into the same river. No river is stepped in by the same man. No step is the same. The simplified idea of it all lets us survive, but it is all a deal we make with our brains. We decide to simplify the universe to a level at which we think we are the thinking rulers of something... the universe? While in fact, we ourselves are an ever evaporating, transforming idea, one that is only held together by very thin, tiny, flowing particles of information. All flowing towards some sort of an ocean, which is maybe like a highway, or maybe not at all... but certainly there always, long before, long after, maybe forever... now. Oh, and remember that piece of information about women being the re-builders and re-inverters of genetic code... and men being the mere carriers of that same old piece of information... destined to eventually run out of ends to lose? Hmm... what else happened today? How are you feeling? Hope the dizzy feeling is gone. I really hope things are feeling better now.

Seeing light and a dead christmas tree. Another morning inside of a giant jewel-box. It looks as if the city had been rubbed in with a special oil over night and now a very custom golden light is shining on it, just to let the best colors come through, the warmest, the richest, the deepest. I have the feeling that I killed the christmas tree. Not that it was living a life of great joy since purchased last december 24th in the afternoon. It was a tiny tree, maybe a foot and a half tall, with a ridiculous plastic red bow attached to it with a wire. It took some effort to remove some of that other plastic decoration as well. The needles were angry and sharp. The tree was the very last one, I think. Now it has those dead brown needles in the center, some branches that are still semi-witty and then those droopy, sad, tired, limp tips of bright colored new growth. I must have given it too much water. Now the little friend has drowned. I remembered today to put the pot on an angle, and indeed, there was still water on the bottom. I really hope the roots did not start to rot. If they did, this is going to be a very tough case. Hmm... Maybe if I simulated a forest fire? Would this help dry the soil and mobilize the tree's spirit? Forest fires in manhattan apartments are definitely one of the worst possible ideas. Maybe there is a softer way... nucular (nuclear) fallout? Could I stuff the tree into the microwave?... I will see how much more I can dry the soil. Maybe some cutting will be needed as well. Oh boy... and I am such an absolute bonsai beginner...

The boy did not want to go to sleep. Bribes did not work. Talking nicely did not work. Being firm and logical and adult did not work. I eventually ended up running around the apartment with the boy on my back, pulling at my hair, yelling. (He was pulling and yelling. I did the running part.) I thought it would be clever to just dump the kid into his bed like this. I aimed for the bed, i let myself fall back. and I hit. The wall. With his head. There were many tears. The boy knew how to say one single word in English (really amazingly well.) The word was, appropriately: "Sophisticated." The tree was patient. It grew silently, dodging the fast movements of temporary disturbances. There were the silly animals, some furry, some dressed. There were some tiny, some larger obstacles. The tree expanded in the spring time, exploded into colors, shades of green. Then in the winter time it collected itself, played "almost dead". All in silence. The nearby fence might have looked like a limitation at first, but once the tree managed to embrace the metal bars, to swallow them into the trunk, to move them slowly off the ground... the fence became a decorating, distinguishing mark, it became the reason why generations of dressed and furry animals came to visit and be amazed. Images of the tree, or even the idea of the tree opened up to be soft connectors between those who understood the idea of slow and patient growth. Periods of almost death did not mean death. Explosions of life were the ones that mattered, though they were mere accents of the real, slow, beautiful growth. Silent, soft, mighty growth... life much longer than the one of the self involved dressed monkeys with their ever hungry digestive tracks. Some understood. Most did not. The first image she showed him was one that was not even intended for him in particular. It was actually not even strictly an image. He loved it. It was a bit like loving the sun just for the reflections it throws on the water. The images she created were a clear reflection of her inner beauty; the one that grows, in bursts sometimes, hopefully throughout and beyond life. She eventually sent him a little picture of the tree. and he loved the picture of the tree. it was so perfect. ...

...riah hair used to grow on top of the head alone. there was plenty of it, it was blond, then dark blond, then whatever it was called. just having woken up from a dream of pulling out giant grey whiskers out of various odd areas of my face might have something to do with the change of hair growth patterns all over. Oh well. Things could be much worse than that, of course. And they will be. I used to think of our balding upstairs neighbor as somebody who knew more things. "It is his thinking that pushes that hair out of his head," my father used to say when I would point at the Dr. Katzy's head from our 8th floor window. It is difficult for me to think this way somehow. Maybe my thinking is not what pushes my hair out. Maybe it is just age. Or stress. Or despeartion. Or frustration. Or pain. Or a combination of everything... the sun is marvelous. the light outside is magical. i love being alive... around midnight on friday. right now... i am in pain. and it is not a good one. it would be very nice to just have a car and to drive for about four or five days... maybe... or maybe longer... maybe in circles... maybe not... this is not how things were supposed to look like at this point in this movie. but i guess things are running quite well, according to some really much bigger script. And i do not know why I even started writing about hair. I have only good memories connected to hair right now... Hmm... the strands of thought are just flowing in all strange direction now. And they are thinning. And ... oh boy... picture below is badly compressed, lowest point in western hemisphere...

no foreign substances added to an ecstatic rush through images, memories and never before seen impressions of things, people and ideas... a firework of images, a flurry, an explosion. he barely managed to catch his breath. he closed his eyes and dove back in again. an unpredicted speed now, unexpected, inexplainable, never before seen moments. a city, a street, a tree, an orange container, the sky transforming, water, a giant fish snapping a smaller one, explosions, the letter A, melted sugar, warm pillow, speed, flower unfolding, an entire book, inexplainable stripes, little boxes, many, boom, bloom, light, a round sponge, a mirror facing the outside of a tent, the color green, the color green, the color green, the color orange, orange, range, ribbon, ornamentik, caffeine, one hundred flowers, georgia, the deck of cards, the decalogue, old photographs, buddha, a cake, the seal, a seal, a cloud, a star, a folded piece of paper, photographs, a dressed bird, sparkles, a spoon, the colorful windows, the drawer in a perfect table, the very tip of a knife, a running rabbit, the setting moon, the afterglow of a walk sign, a tent, the number ten, a ship, a flower, a neck, lips, spirals, dna, dna, dna, membranes, soil, caffeine, drawings, a single dot on a bright red background, a single red drip on a white plane, wandering rocks, a wing, the detached tip of a pen, hb pencils, a perfect drawing, a had torn piece of paper, the number nine, a candle, an apple, the open nautilus, the color yellow, orange, orange, blue, orange, a garden, a carpet, a falcon, dark, books, silence, wax, bamboo, , tiny bottle, the roosters on a curtain, eyes... blink, mountains, fire, a rushing heart, heat, snow on the outside, ice, liquid houses, more tiny boxes, bubbles, stripes, richard avedon at paul smith two weeks ago (huh?), a glowing lamp, mona, flowers, grass, a window, the sound of a distant engine, booooommmm.... split seconds. frames between frames. more. please. yes? a firework of images, a flurry, an explosion. he barely managed to catch his breath. he closed his eyes and dove back in again. an unpredicted speed now, unexpected, inexplainable, never before seen moments. ... are you okay? wow, yes, certainly yes...

clack clack... it was the first time that I saw the sands again. this time on the wall. this time they were contained in a window that would stop being there with every short push of the green button. (Though I the image is now forever burned into me, there on the wall... this perfect place...) the sands looked nothing like the heat and the wind and the danger felt when seen in person. the light from a glowing piece of metal now filtered through tiny colorful particles that were actually there when the picture was taken, i guess? do slides work this way? clack clack... "the wind was as if you were holding a giant hair dryer to your face." I forgot to mention that I could not really see the sand as clearly when i was there. the hot wind just made my eyes teary... the heat made my body panic. clack clack... "these are taken with this old camera, no light meter, the focus is very much off..." clack clack... "this is the day on which Ronald Reagan died. can you see the light through the stripes of the shadow of the flag?..." clack clack... I would spend long evenings projecting fairy tales onto the walls of my mother's office, onto the ceiling of my crowded room, even onto the stickers i managed to attach to the thickly painted doors of a cabinet in the bathroom. clack clack... Projections onto surfaces allowed me to focus I guess. My father's photo studio with its powerful light was the place where I discovered that to every image I saw, there was a parallel reality, a reversed, monstrous reality with glowing black dots in eyes, completely black teeth, other foreign shapes engaged in odd activities. clack clack... I would trace the outlines and be left with some really bizarre results. clack clack... The smell of dust being baked onto a painfully bright light-bulb. Afterimages for minutes, green stripes the shape of projector air vents, preventing me from seeing my room. again and again and again. clack clack... traces of pictures on the inside of the bathroom door. clack clack... shadow puppets. clack clack... the dog. the man. the man-dog. the dog-man. clack clack... more boyish experiments. clack clack... two candles.