we sat around the table in the kitchen. my father had just shown me how to convert the windows in my apartment to winter mode (i had no idea such a thing existed,) and my mother asked for the fifth time why i did not like her food. (I had just downed a giant plate of "stuff" that would make me have pretty serious nightmares later that night.)
I was excited that soon my father and I would be sitting in a car going over the lonely roads of california. my parents actually brought some maps from Germany. I took out the Nevada/California map, requested a pencil and drew the loop of our planned trip onto it.
"Look, here," I began to draw, "we will land in Las Vegas, then go over here and here on the first day, in death valley, then go over here to this lake, then drive through yosemite, then drive south and see the giant trees." My parents both stared at me perplexed.
"The last day will be a bit tough," i continued, "we will need to drive from here all the way back to Las Vegas. But it should be okay. THis here and this here are highways. And we are both drivers. It should be allright."
I put down the pencil and leaned back. I had just drawn a loop on the map which connected three incredibly beautiful areas of this planet. Even on the German map they were marked with special dots and bright green color. I was glowing.
My parents stared. Silently.
"this is cool, no?" I looked at their gloomy faces.
"so he will not get to see the ocean?" My mother spoke of my dad as if he were a whale we had been keeping in the bathtub so we can turn it into fish oil for christmas.
"the ocean is pretty far from where we are going."
pause.
"no beach?" my mother added.
"no beach?" (my father now spoke too.)
"look, there is no beach where we are going. but that does not mean this is going to be a bad trip. you know, we would have to travel pretty damn far from where we are going just so father can stand on the beach."
"but you were just in santa monica. are you guys not flying to california? to los angeles?"
"we are flying into las vegas and out of las vegas."
"no beach?"
"no beach."
"no los angeles?"
"no. it is really far away. besides, this trip is about something else. this is about dad and i going into a place that looks different than anything he has ever seen before. you are going to the beach together when you send your camper to california and then drive around the west for 90 days or whatever your european vacation is."
"then we will also go to colorado."
"sure."
"and san francisco and san diego"
"wherever you guys want to go. anywhere. just go and have fun. this trip was supposed to be a sampler. an appetizer. have you seen the pictures? why are you so surprised? Look, the places where I am going to take father are really incredible."
"just make sure he eats enough."
"oh, for God's sake."
And this was when my father added: "maybe i should not go."
oh boy.
i hear that fish and visitors go bad after the third day. yesterday was the third day. i have a little more to go before my father and i finally hit the road. i can't wait. (or something like that.)
September 2005 Archives
My body is now turned into a giant throbbing stomach, far too irritated to have any movement in it, expanding like some intelligently designed universe thing, pumped beyond recognition by the sugar i consumed today. and i did not want to. and then i did.
the chocolate on my table is now a crumpled up piece of aluminum foil. the "regular cock" that was given to me (not "died cock") at lunch time also somehow helps the sad story. then there was some of that liquid stuff in the giant coffee. oh and what else? i do not remember now.
losing more and more of my concentration these days. soon i am going to wake up to be a pinball. or is it pinball ball? ball in a pin ball?
my father is so very fearless. i took him to a rather dark place near the gowanus canal (we had to take care of some business there) and he just said: "I think mother would be a bit afraid to be here." And I thought it was quite brilliant the way he said it. It was quite brilliant.
It was the most honor preserving way of saying that the place was not most comfortable in the middle of the night. I will need to remember this one.
The road to Dante's View was destroyed by flash floods. I guess we are not going to be able to go there now. I do think though that there will be plenty of other things which will make my parents send their little VW camping bus to california to spend their european size vacation touring a honestly pretty wild west. (It is not so very expensive as one might think, btw. at least definitely cheaper than renting log cabins along the way.)
Oh, that was actually not too bad for a stomach writing, now was it?
Did I mention the really bad smells in the subway this morning?
Perhaps many times before.
I do not remember.
(What is the opposite of an elephant that never forgets?)
watched the sun tear itself off the horizon. it was shy and just a dark red glow at first, then a bright orange, now just an incredibly bright fireball.
a pigeon walked on the edge casting a happy shadow onto the folds of the fabric in the window. my eyelid alien hatched yesterday afternoon. it was right in the middle of a meeting. i had to leave the room to remove some debris.
the story continues, slowly, with my vision blurred slightly and me being as tired as it gets.
my father managed to dismantle parts of the apartment already, fixing things, making some other things shine others are just noted as odd, unusual, bizarre. my mother was a bit shocked that things here are about "three times as expensive as in germany" and it took some explaining that there are some stores here that look like supermarkets but are just fancy tourist traps. now i just have to guide her to places that are about a third of german prices. hmm... let me think where i could find such places.
the sun is hiding behind a much too small cloud just about now. i will have to get going again. no matter how tired i am.
the temperatures have seriously dropped in new york. this should be the sign that the best season is here. i will soon leave for my father's birthday expedition. i am collecting some songs from his favorite years. this will be the soundtrack of our trip.
maybe a very brief nap would be a very good idea to give in to just about now.
can't be late for another meeting. starting soon.
oh dear.
pigeon is long gone.
aliens are breeding in my eye lid. there is a purple bump where things should look rather smoothly. the left eye had been bent out of shape for a while now but since yesterday it is looking rather freakish. i had to let my parents know. they will be here on sunday and since there is a 0% chance of this condition going away by then i did not want to shock them.
My mother is now going to bring my grand mother's special ring (made out of gold) and then this ring will be rubbed in the direction of the nose, while my father is going to sacrifice a few bats. (okay, I made up the bat part.)
There will also be some chamomile involved and some special curses and prayers, i guess.
I love time travel. One minute we are in 2005 another we are in 965.
Once my grandmother's ring reveals that i have actually been cursed, wrath will unleash over those who dared to attack my innocent left eye.
I will probably just end up going to the doctor anyway. and if just to get that experience of blindness for a little while.
(An guy here at the office had both of his big toe nails torn off the other day. How bad could an eye lid operation really be?)
huzzah
At this point in time I am turing myself into a category 0.5 storm, weakened by the pushing and pulling and moving ahead on projects and more projects and projects.
And the lack of sleep and probably also the increase of allergy particles (pollen or whatever that stuff might be,) has turned me into an odd person even I have never met before. But we still have to spend time together, that weird version of me and I. We actually have to spend all of our time together. This can get a bit exhausting onto itself. And so I took the tired and strange me to run in the park the other day. we barely made it to the park. i wanted to run but that other, the tired and frankly pretty out of shape person... well, he did not quite make it. I bet the runners passing by us must have interpreted the miles ahead of us as the miles we had already passed. and the miles ahead of us are still there.
i can barely keep my eyes open. now better actually than when we returned from that run.
but we are moving ahead on the projects, soon i will be able to post a link. the excitement will be great.
that's all i can say now. some will love it. it is some serious stuff.
and my parents are coming to visit this sunday. early this sunday. it will be their first time in this millennium. it will be their first time in brooklyn.
i am going to take my parent to brooklyn industries and deck them out in some bizarre clothing so they really stand out. hmm, one of the great advantages of living in park slope is that not very many tourists make it to here. now there will be two tourists living in my street, on my block, in my building, on my floor, in my very apartment. and they will be not just any tourists. they will be the ones that will bring with them the remore control for all the buttons that have not been pushed for a really long time.
oh, and because they are coming from europe, they are coming for three weeks. that's right.
the last two hours or so were spent in the depths of my abandoned corners of my apartment, vacuuming the spider webs, and the old bills which i had forgotten to push through the shredder.
i do not go in some places... my parents will explore everything within these walls. i just know it.
my mother will be probably more passive about it. she will see this place as a crime scene. my father will just build a new place.
for the last few days i have been looking at park slope with my parents' eyes. i have been listening with my parents' ears. and the quaint neighborhood is suddenly turning into a place where somebody plays symphony of destruction with a chain saw not very far from here, and the neighbors in the building next door seem to be preparing for a very violent hmm... crime?
even the otherwise cute squirrels have been visiting to defecate and urinate by my window. all i need now is squirrels throwing up against my window as my parents enter the room.
i gave the little buddies water.
(do squirrels use drugs? what would my parents think of a squirrel shooting up something leaning against the glass of my backyard window?)
birds still sing outside. and i have the greatest and coolest neighbors i have ever had. so things might actually go allright. We are ready. Squirrels or not.
(did i just hear a gun shot?)
oh, and i got a dyson. it was time. as romantic as it might be to play with and give names to cute little (and big) dust bunnies, it is tornado season, i think, and it is dust bunny hunting season too. so i went out and got that vacuum that never stops to suck. (unless one collects enough dust to go beyond that very low placed mark on the transparent plastic bin, in which case one is required to stop everything one was doing and just press some buttons to let go of that dirt in the bin. (Or near it.)
i have never before enjoyed it so much to wash a vacuum cleaner. it is a beautiful and angry piece of household appliance. i sucked out two full buckets of dirt out of that carpet i got on sale a few weeks ago. It was really an amazing experience. i wonder how bad my allergies would be now if i had not that dyson dust terminator, the one whom i am now singlehandedly upgrading to "animal". yes. with a name like "animal" how can one possibly resist. (I am not kidding. I am upgrading my model to "animal" class... )
oh dear, here i got lost again. oh yes. so i am a storm right now. i am category 0.5. it is late. i have tried to clean things a little better. parents are coming. i am going to travel...
what else happened?
oh, much more happened than i can possibly say.
am i spinning?
of course i am.
warrior needs rest. badly.
good night.
not even sure when i sat by the window last, the songs of the birds outside sound somewhat unfamiliar. the world is turning a bit blurry these days, and there is still so much that needs to be done. and i am doing things and more and more of that. and in the evenings, when i return home to the empty and yet slightly chaotic rooms, i can barely think straight and usually just fall onto the blankets just so i can wake up the next morning to keep going to keep going.
somehow this is not the package i had ordered, but this is the package i picked up once i entered the store. and until i am done with all the cookies, i will need to keep at it.
though i would much rather be behind an unpainted door, watching the sunrise, again and again and again. until i manage to be whole again.
tried to solve a puzzle on the train yesterday just to notice that i had completely missed the entire right hand side of the puzzle. i would usually diagnose this as a post mini stroke condition. at this point however, i am missing the words to describe anything properly, i guess.
here i am, my loose ends shaping into a carpet and i am late for yet another day.
have to run. (oh and have to start running too.)
awoke this morning to a repeated roar of a squirrel. it might have been the black buddy who came by my window the other day to rub his glands against the glass and then to place three tiny soft nut-like objects onto my window sill.
life has reduced itself to very thin minutes of precious time above the surface of a gigantic piece of work. the rest is spent submerged, adjusting little knots of a carpet on the bottom of each newly discovered day, beyond what looked like the very edge of my horizon.
and it is great that the field of vision has been expanding, and i am learning a lot. each day.
so i guess i am not complaining. i feel quite blessed every time i open a water faucet or cross the street without being submerged in toxic soup.
hmm... toxic soup.
the projections of little objects in the windows moved dangerously quickly across the kitchen wall. time is running out of this brief morning as well. i should get up and ready and into the city, i guess.
the squirrel stopped roaring though there he is, jumping from branch to branch.
maybe one day we'll get a picture together. somewhere on the edge of some photograph. and we will look like freshly grown grass.
the crows just went insane about the pinkish color of the sky. the sound of syrens far away marked the arrival of a fresh batch of donuts. a grey cat named mona just kissed the ear of her currently still sleepy owner. the sun jumped from behind the horizon, adjusted all colors from dark orange to pink to everything goes and now the race is on, another day, a freshly opened tuesday, one still drenched in innocence, has begun. more and more eyes will open now and more and more thoughts will propel us towards the other side of the horizon and the crows will go back and the donuts will find their ways and the grey cat named mona will get some well deserved rest.
and all this makes it easy to forget that there are other places much less fortunate. all at the same time.
and the sun is so bright now and i can't stare it, i just have to run. (not away, just forward, okay?)
