February 2007 Archives

perhaps this is what a boxing glove feels like after a bad fight. not a televised one; one that took place in that gym next to the elevated train station, with kids looking in through the layers of brownish dirt and the scraps of paint that belonged to some sign in the thirties. i could have gone to sleep earlier, of course. and i could have maybe gotten some better rest. but i am a sleep-fighter. there are fold marks on my skin that make me look as if i had been twisted very thoroughly to get all the remaining water out of me. and the place where my rest should have taken place resembles some angry attack scene. perhaps this is what a boxing glove feels like after a bad fight, but it is just a boxing glove after all. and what it will always look forward to is that next brief loving touch of what it feels is living pig skin. off to another fantastic round.

freshly opened container of nuts. two kinds. the very good for you. and the very good. two bottles of olive oil. one must have spent some time outside. there is a layer of heavy olive snow inside. snowbottle. green sky and very slow world in general. there was mold on the sausage. it was easy to remove it with a single cut of the big knife. the grape juice did not last long. tiny bottle, painted a bit to make the content even better looking. salads eaten with little desert forks. not in the desert. in front of a television playing a recorded show about deserts. the ¢99 orange. makes my teeth hurt. where was the caffeine? why am i not sleeping yet? one of the boxes in this room contains a punch. i want to punch. something. pages. and myself. can't find the punch. found much more than i was looking for. just not the punch. will do the dishes tomorrow. first thing. it is raining. outside. it might be time to turn off the lights and to stare out the window past the large jade tree, towards the stars that are not, just planes heading for la guardia. crossing the slow green sky. snow on the ground. am i actually trapped in an olive oil bottle? and then maybe sleep will take me away to a place that is a good one. somehow. maybe the mold. will? dreams. the ones good for you. and the good ones. that does not sound right. just make sure to enter any forest at the darkest possible spot. then keep going. do not stop. simple. i guess there can be no punches in a world filled with extra virgin olive oil. snow on the ground. i am repeating myself. (oupi style. good night.)

on one side of the room were maybe ten very smart people i work with. on the other side of the table was a group of very smart people whom i just met for the first time. (they were scientists and experts and just plain good people, doing good things. and i am not kidding.) on the phone was a woman who could not come into the city because the storm already hit her part of the state. a large screen under a camera on the other side of the room showed a conference table somewhere in washington dc, where a man was spinning his blackberry, while looking roughly into our direction. and i began by showing a picture of the town where i was born. i then proceded to that photograph of me with my mother, looking at my neighbor alina, tuning in a station on a transistor radio. it was a bit of an odd moment perhaps. but it had to happen. and it will probably never happen like this again. it is beginning to snow. it will very soon snow a lot more. then a bit more. more still later. quite a good tuesday, i must say. quite a good tuesday.

the scratch on the wall looks like a happy face staring at a different area on the same wall, which happens to look like nothing in particular. or maybe it does, just not to me. not now. the five photographs i glued to the wall a few years ago would rather spend some time on the floor. they have been curling into odd shapes. the model of a man in one of them is gazing through a stencil of a capital r. and it is almost midnight. many of the objects around me seem to have found their favorite place in the world for now. i just needed to help them get here. even the open envelopes under the descriptions of the house across the street appear to have begged to be here on the table. and what will i do with them now? the fantastic summary of that gutted condo on the other side of third street as well as the envelope that came to me from hamburg, just to threaten me that if i do not pay a certain amount of euros, the magazine publisher would stop sending me the publication which never made it here in the first place. i am not sure why i would keep such hostile correspondence and not just throw it out? (hmm... i tear them to pieces and place them in the recycling bin... that was not very difficult.) okay, they are gone now. they will soon be turned into toilet paper, or paper cups. the light from the lamp on the table here was generated by nothing more but the difference in pressure somewhere in new york or pennsylvania. and spinning things. i assume big ones. did this light also find me? the face on the wall seems to be staring at a different area of the same wall, which happens to look exactly like me. it is me, just seen from a rather unusual angle. the mere existence of this occurrence is maybe nothing unusual at all. and tomorrow i will hopefully be able to just throw out the rest.