June 2007 Archives

my uncle in poland sends me weather updates almost every day recently. it feels nice to know what is going on in the city where i was born. weather wise. and yet i like new york storms. just like the one hitting brooklyn right now. the thunder almost instantly following lightning, a good indicator that kensington is catching hits. i am on vacation here this week. i still am going to work, so it is not a real vacation, but i am in amy's place, as she is in madrid, i spend my evenings and morning with mona, the newt and amy's thirsty garden. that's as close to vacation as it got for me this year. a busy summer is taking shape ahead. gigantic clusters of pixels will need to be moved across battlefields of preconception. we will end up in a really beautiful place. i can feel it. read a few comments on the Kensington Blog tonight, and some of them made me want to go out and try one of the many authentic little places here on church avenue. because of the upcoming storm, I did not make it very far, though just far enough to feel as if i had traveled for thousands of kilometers, across at least one border. some of the names of the dishes looked familiar. i was the foreign person here and the game was on. brazil : mexico. i was lucky enough to see the gooool for mexico. a man with a broken arm, who had already left the restaurant came running back to see the gooool again and again... and again, on the incredibly grainy picture of the television, high up near the oddly soggy corner of the suspended ceiling. brazil is not an easy team to play against. everyone in the place agreed. i had expected to eat at the table, yet my food came in a blue plastic bag. the same one that some hardware stores use, the kind that smells like oil mixed with paint. it was a pretty clear way to tell me that it was time for me to leave the premises. the food was rather good, even eaten at home. oh, and i ran into the neighbours in the hallway. and also into jeff from work, in the street, he was on his way to the tennis courts around the corner. this really is a mini vacation. i should send a little descriptive email to my uncle in poland. "it is hot in new york tonight. and it is also raining." i think that's how he would describe yet another wonderful day. he is a poet in many ways, compressing complex events into simple sounding weather report like verses. i always got to decode the little messages, back in the day when his letters tended to arrive with big holes cut by the government censors, and now, when there might be no visible holes in the instant electronic correspondence. i think it might now stop raining.

with an open window in front of me and a very hot laptop on my lap i am listening to some Shrivastav/Sabri, playing Raag-Bilas-Khani Todi Vilambit Gat In Teental 4.4.4.4. and i have no idea what it means. though do i ever have an idea? probably not. the wine tastes like wet soil. and that's a wonderful thing. it really is. if only i could drink the earth. i would. the man who trains bonsai explained that amy's lime tree is not going to grow any fruit for another three to four years perhaps. we might maybe expect some flowers in two years. my jade plant is almost 10 years now. and she is more beautiful than ever. does she get the pleasure to drink soil? in tiny sips maybe? still afraid of moving. having brief glimpses at the book about haniva. what a day. what a day. well, night now. it was good to run into a table this morning. more fun tomorrow. hope the f will go express.

after this freshly ground day, it might be a good idea to just listen to the cats having a tough time in the backyard here. funny, as i was writing this, there was a noise as if somebody were hitting a carpet against the side of a building. do people hit carpets until they let go of all their dust and hair? in that pre-vacuum time in poland, this is what people would do now and then. (wait... then. now?) a freshly ground day. brewed in a pretty solid way, dripped into a cup of what had to get done. only had tea today. the coffee was simply too much for me. the subtle anxiety was simply too much. especially at 3am. about an hour before i usually wake up. maybe. though i never know when i actually do. am i awake now? or am i only dreaming that i am? how can i possibly find out? i just pinched myself. i often pinch myself in my dreams. just to make sure that i am in control. a dream that is solid enough to survive a pinch is a seriously fun dream. it can be one that turns out to be one of those floating, meeting with the asleep sky kind of dreams. or what about that pigeon the other night. the one that just did not want to let go? miranda july apparently has a feature in domino. there is also a story in the summer fiction issue of the new yorker. (the one with the adrian tomine "city thrills" cover, a moment drawn from a place just blocks from where i spend my days. in fact a place i walked by twice today.) i have been measuring my subway trips for a few days now. i had no idea that it can take me longer to take the express train that it might take me to take the f. c to the f in the evenings seems to be the most efficient way to avoid tourists. there are always herds of tourists between me and my train. the little albrecht duerer garden on my fire escape is currently simply perfect. perhaps i could convince one of the squirrels to model as a hare? after a freshly ground day, it might be time to just get some rest. tomorrow we will spend at least 7 hours in rather solid meetings. it is going to be a tasty day. i can smell it. without even waking up.

crashed into a short sleep pattern after looking at photographs taken from helicopters for a good while. nabaztag is telling me there will be thunderstorms today and 28C, but i am not quite sure his earness is right on this one. i should be leaving the house now. and so i will. it is not fun to look into the barrel of a morning which started at 3am. it might have been yesterday's coffee perhaps or a series of other minifactors that turned me into a tumblewit of worries. the sun is shining brightly though and the times has combined tuesdays with thursdays, it seems. science and circuits will make the subway ride even more pleasant. this sort of scares me. but things should turn out to be okay in the end, somehow. hopefully so.

happy mondays on a sunday night. how many places on the web can i really feed in a way that keeps it all together? just one place would probably be best. perhaps right here would be the best place to store all of the tweets and voxes and facebooks and myplaces, all linkedin. hmm... it is part of my job to know all the places as good as i can though. and so i am spread in a very thin way across several slices of specialty toast. and there are only so many hours in a day. and minutes in an hour. and second in a minute. and then there is the rhythm of things. oh, the sacred rhythm. the one that is supposed to rule the crucial moments anyway. how many more life events could i have possibly packed into the summer of 2007? i will never know. the past tends to look perfect, only because it is the foundation of the present as we know it. happy mondays in a sunday night. and it might be a good time to just close my eyes and expose myself to the strange dreams mixed up by my mushed up brain. what is going to float into a new shape tonight? or should i just stay up and learn how to build a good database? happy mondays on a sunday night.