just sitting by an opening pine cone.

took a good imaginary walk through the empty rooms shot by Candida Höfer this evening. Architecture of Absence, an Aperture book had arrived today, just in time before the rain. It was good to walk quietly page after page after page after page. I then took an even more extensive look through that Schirmer Mosel book called Monografie. The sweet scent of never opened pages, the empty rooms upon empty rooms upon empty rooms. A wonderful walk on a rainy evening like this one. Here I am in an almost empty room myself. Calm. Good. I am not complaining. The drops are hitting the glass so well. Empty rooms, quietly arranged on pages of freshly opened books. I returned the books to their shelf spaces and glassine wrappers. Good. Quiet. I had found a very small television set last night. It is so small it does not even know for sure if it is a television or a radio or maybe still an alarm clock. The baby does not work. I will open it up in a few nights. I will not be able to repair it. I will at least have tried. Thursday evening will be probably time for it to return to the curb. There was a small red bird sitting on the edge of the fire escape this morning. I looked at him for a while—he looked at me. I walked a bit closer to the window which made him fly away. Not only him but also a larger bird which was a bit out of my line of sight. The squirrel, working in my herb garden did not want to be interrupted. I wanted to take pictures of the gardening animal but it then decided to move on. I steamed a large pine cone the other day. Not only did it shrink into a very dense object, it also exposed spikes, thorns, sharp edges, protectors. It wanted to be left alone, apparently. I have kept it next to my chair here in the living room since. It is now open again, almost completely. It can now be handled again, as if nothing had happened. It is calm and peaceful. I harvested maybe 10 seeds. A card with images of relaxing catalogue people sporting ecstatically laughing chimpanzee heads has arrived in the mail today. "Hello again, dear one." were the only words on it, besides the address, of course. The words had been nicely cut out of a vodka advertisement. Perfect. As the evening progresses, I hide deeper and deeper in a thin shell and expect my work to go finish itself. And it will not, and I will have to work tonight, and it is probably good this way, as I will have less to complain about when it comes to the slow deterioration of my brain. (Taking place right now, ladies and gentlemen.) I like how quiet this house gets in the evenings. All I can hear is rain and the slowly expanding pipes of the heaters. And outside a raging world with filled and empty rooms and with rooms facing backyards and posters with bunnies and the american west and there is a sunset and a sunrise and everything in between, right this second, as a plane is getting ready to land in the borough north of here. And the empty rooms in Candida Höfer's work will stop being more than the photographic memories... And soon, very soon, tomorrow will also arrive here.