March 2006 Archives

it took me a really long time to figure out how to load the polaroid film into that back i had purchased months ago. even after i was able to close that damn thing, I would have to reopen it after every third shot, just to get those little tags threaded between the rolls of the magazine. i managed to make a few little pictures somehow. they are just tiny and a bit out of focus and i love them. that's it. i will not share. they are nothing i could not share. i just won't. a man on the train today kept asking for change. he had nothing to offer except his hand, filled with change, too much of if already, falling to the ground. it was sad. he, or somebody in his direction smelled rather bad. nothing compared to that cabby the other night. i sat down in the back and it felt as if i had crawled into this man's arm pit. or maybe some other cavity. definitely not washed for days. he kept asking me how i was doing and what i was doing and just kept asking and asking. i really had to focus to not return my day's worth of meals. it was not good. at 2am. 9th avenue. down all the way. canal street manhattan bridge. i do not dislike the manhattan bridge as much as some other people seem to. the west tower of the brooklyn bridge is built on sand. i was told that today was a good day. it was a sunny day. it was certainly a good day for the stock market. i ate two apples for dinner. my refrigerator is packed with items that would be perfect with the things that are not in this same refrigerator. i have managed to work so much in the last few weeks, i don't feel like home is home right now. who is this person who lives here? why is stuff everywhere? who is this man? did i mention that i really enjoyed shooting some really bad pictures? i will have to shoot some more tomorrow. maybe somewhere around 7am? yeah.

one of the nice surprises about the move to new york was that thing with my allergies. when in germany, i would spend spring and summer and even much of the autumn weeping and nose-drooling and just feeling horrible in ways i could not describe since i was too far behind a painful slime wall of allergy symptoms. i was not the only one, of course, friends had allergies too, some so bad that they would get their backs turned into matrices of dirt and pollen, just to find out what it was that caused them the seasonal agony. we would just hang around, our noses sore, we barely were able to see each other, the entire world was blurry and painful and just really unbearable. we probably looked like professional boxers in round 35. even when i had that first good interview with franz aumüller of trust, he made sure to make himself a copy of that self portrait i had made called: ich, mit heuschnupfen. (I, with hay fever.) okay, so coming to new york changed things. it was a big surprise really. my allergies were not half as bad, not a third, maybe even less. it was such a relief. i could finally turn into a full year person, finally, finally... well, perhaps the allergies just did not kick in because there was no time to expose myself to anything that would be even close to those buckets of pollen thrown onto every car in some of the streets where i used to live in germany. so maybe if i had only chosen to lock myself into a windowless office and traveled only by underground train, maybe then i would have been able to avoid those allergies in germany as well? maybe the reason why i would not get any indoor trouble would have something to do with the fact that i simply had no furniture that could collect dust and that even the office had barely been opened, so even there much of the stuff was made from freshly manufactured gefillte wood. so things looked pretty much like a paradise, at least when it came to allergies. and pretty much as in any garden of eden, the fun ended quickly once i bit onto not much more than an apple. my first apartment in the city was on 73rd street on the west side (that would be if we do not count that wig-maker office and the brazilian hotel in times square) and around the corner from my place there was a version of a garden of eden called fairway. (next to citarella) Fairway was a gigantic place where the floor was covered with wood chips and the food was fresh and where the only time one could even hope to get in and out in under 2 hours was after sundown on friday, or perhaps on any given "day" after 3am.) Okay, it was not that bad, but it was pretty serious. the place was open 24 hours, the food was incredibly fresh and arranged in superhumanly gigantic piles. there was a wide variety of produce, and even the more complicated stuff was really sweetly out there. the real estate broker had sold the place to me as if it were an extension of my refrigerator. it had to be since my refrigerator thing was something of a sub-european size, a rather small piece of vintage engineering, the cheapest model my landlord could get in 1966. oh, i just completely lost my track now. what the hell was the story? oh, i used to like apples when in europe. the smaller ones were often better than the ones that were the legal fruit endorsed by the european union. american apples were shiny and gigantic. there was an amazing amount of them in and outside of fairway. i got myself some. bit into it. a few minutes later i was barely able to breathe, and much of the inside of my mouth felt as if somebody had airbagged it. i could not eat the american apples. there were so many of them. none of them i could dare to even try. years had to pass until i finally also developed all those seemingly cured allergies. i am not looking forward to the summer now, or spring or... i don't know what to look forward to really. (i am kidding. all will be wonderful.) oh boy... my attention span is fading. the reason why i even started writing is to have a note for myself remembering when i finally managed to eat three apples this morning without any close to death experience. i peel these buddies now, which reminds me of days of my early childhood. and i can eat apples again. (i think?) so why did i have to write this whole confused entry about all that? i have no idea. i think my eye itches a bit too much right now. the tree in the back yard is ready to just explode in flowers. maybe that's why. (ouch)

2006.03.16 13:53:46 204.111.207.13 Search: query for 'i do not need to write pages upon pages of what i have done and what i have felt and where i have been because it has been lived and every second moves on to the next like the spinning tires of a car when the sun is rising to a new day. Oh, I do not have to write pages upon pages either. And some might think that the time spent writing would have been spent much better living. It is like making a picture and missing this exact moment in time to the camera. It got to see it. And we did not get to see it. Only later, a translated version of it. With writing it is even worse. Turning a flood of impressions into a trickle of letters, words, sentences. How much time does it take to write a sentence describing a split second of bliss? How many days does it take to do it right? How many years does it take to realize that it can not actually be done. Time wasted to the recording devices. It is all around us. I am here now. I could be out, invisibly to you, crawling into the spaces between the seconds cutting this city into perceivable slices. I am here though. And what I am doing is not a recording of what I have done or what I have felt. What I am doing here is what I happen to feel and happen to do and it is exactly like the spinning tires of a car, the sun rising to a new day. it is exactly that somehow. i do not remember really what I wrote a week ago, or a month or a year. I might repeat myself. I sometimes find old entries and they are a mystery to me. They contain hidden messages that even I fail to decode anymore. Hmm... I am going to take an hour now to get home on the train. I think this is what I am going to do.

It is possible to get a cold in Los Angeles. I got one. Right here. Right now. I have had it for several days now. It was so bad today that I did not manage to go to the office. I am just resting. That's my job today. Resting. One day I am going to return to these entries and think of myself as a whiny boy who cried wolf. Here the stomach hurts, now I got a cold. Seriously. I should just get up and get out and just get on with the things that need to get done. There is plenty of them. Damn it. But I can't. I am a weakling. Now somehow more than ever. It might be the many things that we have to juggle these days. How one day swallows the next and then just quickly get devoured by the next day. Los Angeles was a lot of fun. It was a focussed time, but also a really good time. We shot in various weather conditions (hence the cold,) and we shot in different locations (hence the cold.) It is great to shoot with people who know their business incredibly well and then be able to actually have a good conversation with them. We all want to do good things. We should all just assume that sometimes. (It does work well sometimes. It really does.) I should not be posting while slightly delirious. I should crawl back under covers and just feel sorry for myself. Not openly. Not here. This is not the place. I just had not written anything for such a long time. I was worried the google-bot would start missing me. Oh, the good old google bot. Looking out for me, taking a fresh look at the site every now and then. Oh, google. Why would you let eBay advertise the sale of humans? Isn't sale of humans illegal? And why am I an "it?" I am feeling sick. But I am not quite dead yet. oh dear.

one of those larger feathered friends with a red head and belly has been staring at me from across the back yard for maybe 10 minutes now. well, he probably has not been staring at me. I could imagine that he is interested in the feeders. there he is. still sitting there. He won. I have to leave now. Running out of time. It is a bad sign when a house finch can stay in one place longer than I. Today I am going to fly further though. The timing of the shoot in los angeles feels as if it were placed into the calendar by some sarcastic higher force. The large show of Amy Cutler's work opens at the IMA this friday. (Hmm, would have really loved to see that.) And then there are also the various Art Fairs I was looking forward to visiting. (maybe that higher force is not sarcastic but rather caring about my finances?) Maybe it is all good. Maybe it is much better to focus on work for a little while. Too much looking and seeing can lead to really deep bitterness and frustration. There is so much on my plate right now, I have no idea how I am even able to post anything here (like this little entry.) Okay, red throated bird is gone flying. I better pack now. My flight leaves town in just a few hours from now. Cheers.

managed to wake up very tired before the sun. outside was a rather dark brooklyn. i packed my things and walked into prospect park. some of the runners looked at me as if i were a broken toy, some looked at me as if i were a new one. (it happens.) the birds were shy about their songs. only a few dared to let go of a few notes, just enough to not be bothered by lawyers. Bird song sampling. it took about 30 minutes for me to get softish knees. i will probably die of a heart attack. i do not know how to move my slowly rusting body. somewhere in the belly of maureen dowd's "are men necessary" (well, clearly they are for some authors, so they can write books about them, no?) somewhere in there was the mention of that edge age for men, when they realize how brutally mortal they are. i guess now would be the time. no. now is the time. i catch myself with some of the same thoughts i had when i was 15, except that now i know better and this does not make it any funnier. (When i was 15, I had no idea what I was about to do. Now I sometimes have no idea what the hell I have done so far.) no,wait, now i made it sound so negative. it is not quite as bad as it sounds. I should be on top of the world, actually. I do work for perhaps the best agency there is, with some of the finest people in the business. Even the accounts i work on offer products which can bring some healthy happiness to those who use them (without killing them in the process. A really rare set of qualities.) Okay. I am happy. This is it. I am really, really happy. I want to cry. (Can't even do that right now.) A mocking bird came by the feeders this morning and told everyone to get out of sight. It looked as if he hated everyone, including himself. He then flew away without even trying to get some of that bird food I have here. The peanut cake and the cage have been stolen. Maybe the squirrels did it. My dreams have recently been intertwined with moments of surprising loss of little things. A million things perhaps. Maybe just a few... maybe 3, or 7 or 17? I am going to create a new category now. Lame entries. This one is going to be added. With a little star. One out of five.

the driver made a very strange gesture when i thanked him for the ride he gave me from silvercup to home. because of a misunderstanding this particular ride ended up costing more than a flight to miami, including cars to airports. i think the issue will be resolved. somehow, somewhere. by then i will be back from some more trips and ups and downs and worked through weekends. because of the shoot gone quite well, I am not going to have to go back to the studio tomorrow, which means that i will not work this sunday, which means that i will finally have a day off after maybe a month or so. insanity. no wonder i did not manage to write anything here. by now the squirrel could have fallen off that feeder in that photograph in the post below. well, actually, some oil and some tape and plastic cups made me a temporary winner of the witold:squirrel challenge. wd40 apparently dissolves certain controlled substances and keeps squirrels away from luxurious bird feeders. nuts. i was supposed to go to los angeles on monday. now it is going to be wednesday. here and there it is work. the decision had something to do with the size of the fires burning (and a very smart grey cat called mona.) what am i going to do with myself? will i sleep all day tomorrow? will i draw up a storm? will i go out and buy some film and get to know my inner picture maker again? I will probably end up on the sofa, staring towards the television set i do not have and making guesses why america loves art so much when it happens to be a projection onto a screen that is called silver. for now i am drinking a screw driver. this does feel like a house improvement project and indeed, the home does look much better already, there is a smile on my face, i am writing an entry into this very open and yet also very hidden space. maybe i should write more in about 50 minutes from now. i hear this is when the tools of the trade really give me a good spin. i think i should do that. or at least try. see you later then, invisible observers. (some of you perhaps not even human.) cheers. and please no strange gestures. i am going to have nightmares about that.