August 2006 Archives

it was a day that just kept gathering more and more confusion as it progressed in some strange rhythm which was far too complex for me to understand maybe because it was played by so many instruments. had to go home earlier today, as my head was turning into a place foreign to me, a forrest maybe, or some system of unexplored caves. it was that feeling one has the day before one is hit with the high fever that comes with the flu. i hope i will be okay tomorrow. today was not a winning entry into my calendar. clouds not only in the sky above new york. need some seriously serious sleep now. not kidding.

so much sleep was hidden underneath the pillows in my bed, so much of it just hiding from me for months now, ready to pounce and then yet never actually... until perhaps today. today it just grabbed me by what is left of my hair and pulled my face into the softness of the cotton sheets. here we go, it said, here we go, now shut off that plan you had for today, it is raining outside, you will not be going anywhere. "it's 8 o'clock and i don't know about you, but i am going to bed now," said the nabaztag. and so the day was spent mostly under covers. i eventually managed to get out and to just ignore the rain and get some food related products. but now, about 14 hours later, i am ready to drool on the sheets again. and i will, i am just going to finish that little glass of zubrowka with apple juice. it took a while for me to feel ripe enough to open one of the four bottles i brought back from poland. i will need to have a conversation with nabaztag. he is much too loud and wants to tell me far too many things. or maybe i only have this feeling because i tried to sleep today. and the rabbit would just make sure i know an hour passed. every hour. three minutes after the hour. i am certain i did not manage to find all the sleep hidden between the sheets.

we were just talking about mach when johanna peeked into the room to tell us that he had just died. he was on a hike in rwanda, working on a non profit project for the agency when it happened. he just died. it happened completely unexpectedly. he was not even 40. he packed so very much into his lifetime. he worked so incredibly hard, pushing himself and others much further than they knew they could go. hmm... he died doing what he loved. a friend says it much better. -----a few days later---- okay, so now that a few days have passed i am starting to somehow very slowly maybe begin to hope to understand. mach has left this planet because he has to complete a different mission somewhere else. or maybe two missions. maybe three. he will need to help someone become better at what they do. he will help many. in many ways. in ways they do not yet even know. mach was the master of multitasking, wasn't he? one could be in a meeting with him, in his office, and he would be talking and IMing a friend (or several) and at the same time critique and tell jokes and rewrite copy. (one of his goals was to become a better copywriter. well, he was not a copy writer when he started this journey, but it was a journey and he wanted to get far.) so mach was a serious multitasker. and he was an incredibly hard worker as well. and he made everybody around him work in ways they had no idea they could ever... i mean... he really pushed some rocks onto one's path and so one had to learn and one had to learn quickly. that big statue of ganesh was there for a reason. "you will learn to find new paths, my friend," it said. and then the paths would multiply and in the end one would end up with something rather unexpected, in most cases much better than the original idea... and hmm... a sense of accomplishment. we worked in two agencies together and we could have as well worked in two worlds together and maybe be four completely different people as well. so there were different kinds of mach in that one mach. very different kinds of mach. (I maybe "knew" three...) it is more than a year ago that we last shook hands. and he said that we will meet somewhere anyway. and yes, we will. i just want to first manage to reach the age mach managed to pack into his life... hmm... that does not feel possible at all... only he could do it... by stuffing several days into each 24hours and by allowing a large group of people to live portions of these days mach must have been at least 130 when he was called to help on that next mission. i have the feeling he is already working somewhere. he is already arranging and organizing something somewhere. probably several things at once. and there is a statue of ganesh in the room and there are some comfortable (and some less comfortable) chairs arranged around a table with some exotic candy on it. i could bet he is out there again. oh, and that part of his life that he left for all of us? that's the part that will keep us growing for a really good while... many years... hmm... probably longer. and better... and yet he is also the guy who brought starbucks to dumbo... okay, one more thing... he also wrote this (on his very short lived secret blog.): "my mind likes to question what's right, what's wrong, discover what i could be doing better and hopefully learn something along the way." and "maybe life isn't just about getting from one place to another at 65 miles per hour (except in pennsylvania). maybe its about taking the next exit and not really know whats going to happen at the end of the road." maybe there just is no real end of the road?

"did you just wish me gesundheit, a few minutes ago when i sneezed?" "well, i said 'bless you' but i could have said gesundheit, i guess?" "i would like to express my gratitude for that. thank you" i am not quite sure if the kid was on a date or not. he stared at the woman he had dinner with for a good while until he managed to say that it was just 9pm, not close to midnight as he had imagined. he suggested she go home. then he sneezed. at the table in front of me, a guy in a white polo dress shirt was describing the various ways he managed to blow thousands of dollars. his mother was apparently upset about it. his girlfriend loved the new home. oh, home, it felt. what a happy place. the 7th avenue bookstore had a book i liked in which i found pictures of people i worked with. it was good to see them, well lit in front of an abstract brown background. jury for this. jury for that? experts. good experts. i agree, i guess. the day managed to sneak its way out of the back door again. it kicked over some shelves with plates before it left. i will collect these tomorrow, guess. bless you. gesundheit.

the apples were organic. i had to pull them out of a plastic encasing though, into which they might have been put shortly after their arrival from new zealand. that's a pretty long trip for someone who claims to be good for the environment. (something... not someone. i hope the apples did not have a soul.) maybe the apples i ate took a sailboat made out of bio degradable materials only to get to the piers in red hook? and they rolled themselves up the slope from there? now they are gone. the tasty parts separated from the rest. eaten. gone. the cores and skins are ready to be shipped back to a landfill in hmm... would that be new zealand again? there is a tingling in my mouth as if the apples had not been organic at all. or maybe it is not the chemical part that kicks me about them? my other apple has been in the shop for (let me check iCal) almost 20 daysnow. the display was a bit on the loose side and blotchy and the thing would not close properly anymore. then somewhere on the way to los angeles last month, the airport card disappeared from the consciousness of the operating system. i know, i should not be playing with an airport card, while 10000 feet in the air and definitely between airports, but what if it was just gone? i mean, not there. the invisible airport? (how useful would that be?) i made an appointment with the apple store in santa monica, as this was where i spent about a week working. my appointent was the last one before the shop closed, on a sunday. the genius did not really want to deal with me, it seamed. but i had a real issue. i needed actual genius help. he looked at my situation, disappeared in the back, taking my powerbook with him. he reemerged after 15 minutes perhaps, holding the powerbook as well as a little silver organ bag. okay it was one of those antistatic bags. my airport card had come loose, it was not really broken, but the computer would not boot up when the genius tried to stick it into the appropriate slot. the computer would actually not boot up with any card stuck into that slot. the genius recommended that i drop off my powerbook at that shiny new 5th avenue store. i managed to do that, maybe two weeks later. perhaps about a week after my return to new york. (and the new york genius was a bit upset with the santa monica genius btw. since the brilliant guy in california had not recorded our encounter at all. so i was lucky that he did not hand me some other part of the powerbook in a little bag. he could have voided all my warranties.) i somehow suspected that i would not be getting back my powerbook any time soon. and so i got a little mac mini as a replacement buddy for the time when the main computer was out of the house. it is a good mini (it has two brains on a platter, just like me and it is very subtle about things it does, so we really can relate.) it plays very well with most of the software thrown at it. okay, it took several days to open indesign and photoshop plays as if it were 1995 and the mini were my good old quadra 800 which i used to carry in a giant backpack, just to prove that the device was luggable. i bet it is 1000 times faster than my old quadra, it just feels as if things were a bit on the sluggish side with those few adobe applications i should be using all the time. (when i can leave the room to play a round of animal crossing, just so photoshop has time to resize a picture might be a good illustration of what is happening here. i also hear that adobe is on that case. how did apple dare to surprise them with that switch like that.) i still wonder about the apples that traveled to me all the way from new zealand. sometimes it is the best idea to not leave the country perhaps. the apples could probably be much tastier in auckland than after their long travels... in brooklyn. and my powerbook is probably waiting in a shop somewhere in california because of a missing part that needs to be flown in from taiwan, yet is stuck in the airport because it is not allowed to carry any electronic devices on board.

a little nervous now. tonight i am going to be going against the time zones again, in so many ways, this is going to be time travel of the finest sort. not only am i going to germany, where i am going to see my parents, i will also then go to poland, where i am going to see pretty much the rest of my family, at a wedding in krakow. i have not seen some of the people for 25 years, so this should be incredibly interesting. there are obviously many more twists and turns to all this and i think that all this goes well too. we adopted some nabaztags and one is more liked than the other. no two bunnies can be liked alike, i guess? okay, i should probably pack and prepare now. would not like to show up to a polish wedding in a brooklyn industries t-shirt with a bizarro brush growing from my balding forehead. though maybe that would not be the craziest idea. i probably should have slept better last night. that pre-jetlag of mine is not the nicest feeling to have. perhaps it is time for another glass of water and a brief walk in the currently boilingly hot park? or something like that. in some way.