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October 18, 2005
please check on my command. "please check on my command," the man next to me was probably German. "Command" instead of "order" somehow was very clear to him and surprisingly also to the very friendly waitress. He had been waiting for his food for long. In the mean time he had been handling a little flock of digital devices to stay in touch with somebody, somewhere, somehow. nonstop The waitress soon returned to me (?) with a second check. So maybe things were not quite as clear as they seemed. The food was good; mystery items arranged in a very beautiful way. I avoided the things that somehow seem to make my stomach twist into excruciating spirals. Tried to take a look at some of the 4600 or so digital snapshots my father took over the few days of our trip. It was a bit difficult to dive into this giant data bank of first time impressions. It will take us both a good while to decipher the intentions behind some of the pictures. Many of the photographs are just of me, pressing my left eye against the eye piece of the ttl light meter. There are no pictures of me screaming into the camera, there are none of me crying, staring into heavens with my fists recognizable only as two crab-claw shaped blurs. I remained very calm throughout the entire trip. I somehow learned that survival strategy somewhere. It is not a good idea to play dead when attacked by a bear. It is an equally bad idea to lose one's cool when seeing his father once in about seven years. Many pictures he took are of me taking pictures. And thus I took some pictures on the trip. I picked them up from duggal yesterday. Some turned out horrible which is a good sign. It means that I can still recognize horrible. Some are quite good. I will keep the good ones. I will not have the heart to destroy the bad ones, I guess. All are too large for me to scan right now, but not everything needs to be scanned and shared and posted and commented upon right away. I feel like I am getting closer to a feeling of being private in a large crowd (here). Now I am beginning to just be, perhaps? This is so very important for any original work, no? Performances are usually excellent for interpreting arts, I guess they are called the performing arts in English? It feels nice to be able to write here and not imagine any audience. Maybe one person. Like, about right now. You. It was good to take pictures a bit slower. With one eye I would dive into a world somehow related to the one surrounding me, and yet very controlled by my actions. Not only was it important how objects aligned, it was important how i moved myself in relation to them. The bear was there too. We all had to be aligned into very deliberate arrangements. We then had to be undisturbed in this position for maybe a minute, maybe two, maybe ten. Of this time, we would allow the film in the camera to be exposed to the outside world. This tiny moment was the one when we would all close our eyes, so the film could see the light. The camera would flip up the mirror, I would stare into darkness, movement stopped. We would all be there. Then. Blind. Once this moment was successful, I would turn the crank of the camera one and imagine that the moment was not as successful as it potentially could have been. If the moment failed because one of the participant failed to remain calm, I would repeat the procedure until there was at least a certain level of satisfaction. It is a quiet thing to do, this making pictures. And every step is just one of many. And though things happen in loneliness, at least for a split second, there was an army of ideas and movements and people who made this moment possible. So many people touched most of the little particles of this moment until it became itself. My father has been waking up, not knowing where in the world he might be. Was he in one of the national parks? or maybe las vegas? I woke up last night arguing with myself in polish. it is getting late again. I will need to close this computer and see what my brain has prepared for me as an interpretation of events past. good night sweet dreams. (no period.) "please check on my command." "in chief." please?