May 2003 Archives

And there it was, this strong feeling that this was the right place, the right time, the absolutely perfect everything, except for the actors, the protagonists, the characters. They had been chosen by what happened to be a series of not so serious decisions. Some of the decisions were not even decisions, they were so tiny, they did not even get any mind-share, no top of mind awareness, not even airtime in the lower regions of the conscious. So all the steps that lead to here were very logical, had mostly a majority, at least somewhere, at least at some point in time and space. And it all worked out perverktly. The time was right, the place was right, there was this absolutely perverkt everything, and now...
All thizs wass aboutt to leat too trouple be-ond de bousnd of tee imajination off thorse bevore a 1 no. e imagi-nation o he opservers ad the (FREE with the purchase of a large soda) tie-me && pace o ne spixa wha (Now with 0% apr financing) stretched (join us now for a news update) en-ugh (Sideffects are comparable to sugar-pill and include vomiting, brain damage and FREE with the purchase of a new and improved, now with more of the original) 2 a(stay tuned as we will be back, right after these messages)c(FREE)c(FREE)e(FREE)p(FREE)t a(FREE)n(the body was found in a room underneath the rear portion of the property)y(FREE)t(FREE)h(for the rest of your life)i(we are interrupting this broadcast for a live feed from the((FREE)))n(FREE)g, (the right(FREE))of course.
And so things just took their path and marched on. Oh, glory...

and because he (or she or it) was made out of air and water and some other material that came from the universe anyway, he was not only in harmony with the elements, he actually did not even disturb them. He did not turn the on or off, he did not separate a thing, he did not even rest. He left no trace, did not achieve a thing, he just went back to be what he was before he was. It was that simple. There was no monument, there was no book, there was not even a picture of him, not a trace of the one who just became and then became something else, just to later be a completely different idea, made out of some completely different things and ideas and some other stuff that I do not even know of. but because he did not even have a name, a different *** was chosen to be G*d, one that could be grasped in the more linear mind of a man, who not only went on to naming all the animals and things (one after the other, of course) and all the stuff beyond (up to whatever his imagination permitted, of course), but also felt important enough to think that he was, similar to whatever... hmm... I wonder why?...
And they are actually all still here, or maybe not. But just thinking about it is completely superfluos.

(Not actual picture of anything mentioned above... you wish it were that simple.)

it is the hard shell, you see, the hard shell makes him apear as if he were not able to smell the less than obvious. yet inside of it, that hard protective shell, inside of it is a softer being, a more curious little guy. And this is it for right now. I will say more, just not right this minute... so please come back... there might be some change in store...

...majestically, sweetly, with love. She ran through the fields, encouraged by the wind. The scent of flowers with her, farther and farther away she went. She would later remember how her breath began to hurt, how her chest filled up with needles, how her head began to spin.
She woke up in warm grass, with no s anywhere but high, incredibly high above her. She listened closely to the tiniest sounds around her for hours, until she fell asleep again.
She dreamt of the green blades of grass and how they moved in the wind like the hair on the back of a running beast. Running majestically, sweetly, with love. Running through the fields, encouraged by the wind. The scent of flowers with her, farther and farther away she went. She would later remember how her breath began to hurt, how her chest was filled with needles, how her head began to spin.
She woke up in warm grass, with no s anywhere, except for the ones high, incredibly high above her. She listened closely to the tiniest sounds around her for quite a while, until she was soothed to sleep which brought her the dream of the blades of grass. The grass moved in the wind, slowly, as if it were the hair on the back of a magical creature of incredible beauty. Majestically, sweetly, with love she ran. Through the fields she ran, farther and farther away through the fields. Chasing, chasing the wind. The scent of flowers their companion... farther and farther away they went...

as the helicopter took his new sneakers for an air stroll, he realized that he did not really need shoes at all when high above the clouds. his feet looked rather clumsy in this altitude anyway and because he had completely forgotten his socks, his toes were now really cold.
the clouds were of course impressed. wow, look at the stripes, they are so cool.
the little bird that had been there since before the new purchase of the footwear spoke in a calmer, softer voice. it was all about the looks, the style, design as a way of life.
and the helicopter really tried to believe what was being said and pointed out, but somehow... these sneakers were really not important up here.
and even the starts and landings were much more fun barefoot.
hmm...
("you should have gotten the nike's"... the bird suggested... "they are much better than what you got for now...")

it is my fault... it really is... (but not really all of it?)

James Paterson was born in London in 1980. His work can be seen on two sites. Griff of ultramicroscopic sent me the link to presstube.com this morning. I then later discovered halfempty.com and the incredible insertsilence.com. I contacted James and hope to find out more about his work process. So far, all I know is from the description of his work on youworkforthem.com I hope they will all forgive me for quoting James here, it is all with good intentions:

"These drawing were done with the help of a piece of software I wrote. The software is a simple arrangement engine that creates static compositions using animation as its source material. I explore the compositions and make selections of anything I find that interests me. Then I make pen drawings based on those selections."
-James Paterson

I like this work. Six individual drawings were available for sale on "youworkforthem", for the fair price of $99. Which ones do you like most? (Available or not.) My favorites are #5 and #9, mainly because of their variety of density within the piece. I am obviously interested in various forms of density in drawings.
I really hope that James keeps on course. I like his animations as well. I am looking forward to seeing more of his work online and offline.

The was probably 55 or so, he had these expensive gold rim glasses on, a suit and a very tasteful tie. His white hair was professionally groomed to perfection. He was leaving the Disney store on 5th avenue with his elegantly dressed, four year old son on his arm. The son was dressed as expensively as the . I think he wore a tie as well, his hair, not white yet, was groomed with the same care as his dad's. The boy was screaming on top of his lungs. Neither one of them was carrying a disney bag, so I can only imagine what drama must have happened inside of the store that made the not buy one of the newest cute "Finding Nemo" toys for his child.
The boy must have been screaming inside for a while, because he now started kicking and grabbing for whatever he could reach. He finally managed to get hold of his 's glasses. He tore them of the man's face and squeezed them in his little hand with such vicious determination that they just gave up their original shape.
The slowed down his , who naturally tried to get his spectacles back, grasped for the boys wildly moving arm with the glasses, almost lost his balance... he had to let the boy stand on his own feet.
This seemed to be the moment the boy wanted to happen. He threw his 's glasses against the sidewalk with whatever hight was in him. The frame barely bounced, the glass did not break, the grabbed the little boy by the shoulders in a pathetic attempt to calm down this little monster. The little guy now finished off his attack by stepping with all his four year old might on the glasses. Again and again and again... still screaming, still on top of his lungs.
I entered the Disney store and was greeted by a very happy man who was wearing a shark as a giant, plush glove. The shark spoke to me:"Did you get the new 'Finding Nemo' toys yet? You get two FREE tickets with a purchase of $50 or more." And there I was, truly a witness to the many new meanings of several four letter "f" words...

thank you so much for the kind words and mails and all the good energy... it is a bit better now, things are not looking quite as gloomy as they did just this morning... at least I am telling myself that things do not look as gloomy.
The last thing I would want this blog (well, it is actually not really a blog or is it?) would be a daily complaint about some sad perception of things. Witold!, get over yourself, grab yourself together, smile, sit up straight, buckle up, and no spitting. Also... it actually takes dirt to grow flowers, so feeling bad is a good start for something positive at times. Gosh, this is all pretty forced, isn't it?
I am doing better though... I think I would even like to write a little more...
Except my battery is threatening to go out for dinner in about 18 minutes, which according to the new time system of the old batteries might actually be about five.
Oh, look, I made a little drawing. ( I made many more today, yet still not the ones I was supposed to have done by today. Aargh.)..

When in a sad mood, at least try to smile. Stretch your lips and shape them to look like a smile. You could also start by trying to draw somewhat happier little drawings. Something, do something to make yourself a bit more balanced. It is probably not a good thing to be overly joyous or overly happy, but when really sad, try to at least somehow steer yourself into some middle of the scale by balancing the world around you in some ways, some ways, some ways.
I am not doing so well. Below is my attempt to balance my current feeling. Hmm... it does make me smile... (it is pretty silly, isn't it?)...

I found this sealed webcam in the recycling room on my floor a few months ago. Somebody got it for free with their broadband service, I think. The person must have a mac, because the camera only works with windows compatible drivers. (I really hoped it would just work with my PowerBook...)
I tried installing it on the little vaio I have here, but Logitech was trying to push me into some "special" deal. I was supposed become part of some sort of cool comunity (that looked suspiciously like the folks I see all the time on the first pages of search results on stock photography sites.)
So I kept the little plastic eyeball under the bed so it could collect something less glamorous than images of my surrounding (dust.)
I reconnected the wires yesterday...
I looked for some friendlier software solution than the "free" one... (wait they called it "FREE!", which I begin to suspect must really mean something else.)
I am currently running the "CoffeeCup WebCam 3.5 Trial" I have some 'free' days left of the shareware.
I pointed the camera at myself at first, of course (wouldn't you?). I then noticed that I had not shaved for a while and that my favorite Sbritt t-shirt shows that I have been wearing it for a while.
So I pointed the cam at the corner of 96th and Broadway, since I have been describing events on that corner so many times.
The image quality is pretty miserable, but you can probably see the various players of the corner, at least architectonically speaking.
I am very likely to turn off the camera soonish. I will probably end up pointing it at myself as well (of course...). Right now the image below is actually a live feed, updated every 15 seconds. (It does not update for you, you might have to refresh the page.)
As you can see, it is raining in New York. There are barely any people in the street. Click here for Legend.

Here we go again. A voice inside of me is telling me to just let it all go. Stop it all. It is not worth a penny, a smile, a thought. And what am I doing? I am letting it drag me down into the depth of the sad place and I request that nobody go looking for me. In a tiny moment, all of my positive outlook turned into a dark puddle of sticky mud. I will need some time by myself please.
Feeling really bad. Sorry for that. : [

Growth. Positive growth, negative growth. Sideways. Emotional growth. Unemotional growth. Intentional growth. Unintentional growth.
Joined forced. Plants. Living things. Still life. Sad. Quiet. Slow.

Jumbo and Sumbo decided to think beyond their elephantastic horizons. They put their minds together and imagined themselves as the brain halves of a gigantic dog somewhere high on the roofs of a city yet to be built.
Jumbo wanted the dog to have fierce teeth, tusks just like the ones of a mammoth. Sumbo was thinking of a more beak-like solution.
This is where they developed some really strange looking design, but otherwise, their brainstorm turned wild enough for them to have some serious fun for days. Or at least this is what I was told and I am not telling by whom.

First there was the unexpected waterfall, just steps away from South. The area from which the water was coming from is a wildlife refuge right in the midst of southern . I had no idea it existed and I have lived here for 7.5 years now. And then there was the even bigger surprise. To the left, by the walkway, right behind the benches... a Raccoon. A serious and pretty animal. He or she was a good 3.5 feet tall. The fur in the back was a bit thinner than on the rest of the body, which might either mean that it was an older animal or that it is time to get rid of that wintery fur. But wait, a raccoon?, right there? right in the South of Central Park? Impressive. Was he a loner? A lost animal? Was he like the Coyote that made it to the park in 1999? Or maybe like that wild turkey that seems to be spending some sort of fleet week vacation on Manhattan's Westside?
It appears that there is a real Raccoon population in the 150 year old Central Park. There are supposedly 40 or so animals there, right in the midst of Manhattan. What a good surprise. Isn't it?
This particular individual appeared to be comfortable with people (not to the degree where one would expect rabies, of course.)
A raccoon, what a perfect New Yorker. ; )

"You should not use your brain to think. If you got paid for your brain thinkin' you would be broken." (not a typo) The Gristedes on 96th street has a new boss. It also has a piece of cardboard glued over the sign outside. Open [cardboard] hours. This used to be a 24 hour place. Now they close at 1am and open again at 6am... Hmm. The little shop on the corner here will remain a 24/7 place. I wonder how long this new boss will remain the leader he thinks he is at this good old supermarket. The way he spoke to a girl who helped him break down boxes just did not seem right. "In fact, if your brain were there for thinking, they would not have hired you..." He felt smart and unstoppable, but she really did not like this last one. "Okay, enough," she said "there is a line and you better not cross it, okay?"
"My brain is going places where it should not." was his very serious answer...
Wow, the pressure must be truly unbearable when thoughts dive this deep.
The woman at the cash register asked me if I wanted my six bags delivered. I explained that I live practically across the corner... which was a combination of around the corner and across the street, but a really bad one.
Could it be the air in that place that turned all of us into grammatically and behaviour challenged New Yorkers?
It must have been the same air that made me put the equivalent of my body weight into the shopping cart and later in my hands. I will probably at least not become dehydrated in the next [cardboard] hours or so. (Got some of that vitaminized water as well. It is professional grade... oh boy...I am such an opposite of an athlete)

It is very tempting and very easy to be used by software. One could be under the impression that software is made to enhance our ability to create, it is often described as tool, or as a tool-set, but often software is an actual work of art itself and whatever is created with it becomes somehow just a little part of a bigger concept. It is just tempting to use certain effects that can be easily achieved with a certain code, while we shy away from those other things that would be very easy in reality but become a bit of a process in the virtual space.
I guess the trick to avoid the temptations of the tools given to us by programmers and the marketing departments of software houses. One should at least attempt to restrain the desire to use all the features, or the easy features, or the cool features of a particular program.
One could just forget that Photoshop lets us pick from a large color palette and use only two colors for example (The web helped design by forcing designers to reduce their pallets due to bandwidth... at least for a few years). One could avoid geometric tools in Illustrator. One could try to make things without ever using the scale function...and so on...
I think such work with computer systems is healthier than the "holy mass of software worship" many of us practice.

Having set this as an ideal, it is sometimes just nice to give in and be tempted and just press the expensive virtual buttons on some palette somewhere deep in the interface of a program and just let the programmers take over. Let them drive...
And then the results might be something like the little drawing below. (A first attempt to use symbols in Adobe Illustrator 10...)

A wonderful article in the times this morning, describing the sightings of a Wild Turkey in Manhattan, just a few blocks from here on the Upper West Side.
How much do I wish that all roofs in Manhattan were turned into little parks, just like the rooftops of Rockefeller Center, perhaps?
Read the entire article by Thomas J. Lueck here.

Do you know the font FellaParts by one of the greatest and nicest men in the business and beyond, by Edward Fella? Just wanted to answer your question before you ask me what these symbols are that "explain" what happened to our little friend here.
Hmm. They do not explain anything? What makes you think that any explanation anywhere ever does?

Urgent Update: Our friend is not dead. He is only sleeping. Here is proof. Thank you. (And thank you for worrying.)

and life is not always the open plate or the open door or the open ending. It is sometimes a pretty simply solid and not very nice smelling place. And we can not jump or turn or even think of a way out. And there is nothing we can really do about it. At least for a tiny little while.

At times, we would just not go anywhere, we would just stand there, not even sit. All this rushing, this jumping, this pushing and pulling and going places has somehow brought us here. But now what? What shall we do now?
Spread those wings again and make one more jump? COuld we keep pretending that those are not wings? Could we keep pretending that this is not a beak? Could we keep pretending that there is no voice in our throats?
Hmm...

And then water turned into air. And time was still flowing at just the right speed.
And we traveled in a different element maybe, but we still traveled quite well. And pretty and quietly indeed.

"People who look for symbolic meanings fail to grasp the inherent poetry and mystery of the image. By asking 'what does this mean?' they express a wish that everything be understandable...
But is one does not reject the mystery, one has quite a different response. One asks other things." (René Magritte)

There was a car accident on 49th and 9th. A car cut off a cabby. There were big yellow streaks on the side of the black car. The driver did not want to deal with it, it seemed, neither did the cabby. The men just shook hands and continued their journeys.
At the amish market, the sandwich man made a very bad joke:
"We have a special tonight: the Honeymoon Salad. It is Lettuce alone and no dressing." hmm...
A puddle of dried blood with a very fresh glowing red center was being ignored by pedestrians on 46th between 6th and 7th. The Ambulance was there already. Somebody was being kept alive.
The Harvard Club has a new addition to it. The man in the elevator (the one in brown socks in sandals) was very excited about the new extension of the building.
Eliot Spitzer gave an excellent (intelligent and entertaining) speech..
I was the only man in the entire building who did not wear a tie and a jacket.
Hmm, it barely mattered... after a while and some wine.
Forgot my power supply at the office. One battery is empty now. The other has barely 30 minutes left. Going to get some real sleep instead.
Please take care of yourself tonight. Okay?
Code Orange again. Will it ever turn to green?

And sometimes it is impossible for me to comment on drawings even when they are just drawn, just straight from the pen. (stylus.)
Why an octopus? Is it the longing to be able to talk with the entire body at all times, clearly, in shape-shifting ways? Is it the ability to turn into anything in just seconds. Or to disappear in a cloud of excellent ink?

And the whale knew now that he was not dreaming. It was another giant octopus traveling on the calm waters of the ocean as if they were hills of a drier landscape.

Somewhere in a completely different universe, a completely different creature happened to be doing the same thing. And there was nobody there to watch.

He could not hide his thoughts very well. As they glanced upon his consciousness, they would instantly appear als large letters inside and outside of his body. What could be done to prevent this? He wished so much somebody invented clothing already. Or maybe at least some undergarments.

Celina Alvarado sees the world through a pair of especially big eyes. see for yourself. (Just a quick post from my project related visual journeys...)

As I opened the window to see why there was this constant chopping noise over the Hudson river, there were three helicopters, lined up perfectly, at least from my point of view. Another lucky moment. There are two of them out there now. One is suspended over Riverside Drive, it's dark belly with the single search facing me now. The other one is traveling slowly up the avenue.
The eyes in the sky are telling me that something might hva happened behind those buildings, between the trees.
Another helicopter just joined the bunch. Hmm... confusing little early morning observations.

She ran, quicker and quicker now. From wave to wave she rushed. Her back legs stopped touching the water some time ago. She did not think about it at all now. It was just her and the water and the night and the storm. They were all one, one being. Afraid, afraid to stop, afraid to change directions, just rushing, further, further and further away from the land. Towards the really dark water, towards the really deep see, towards the barely touched place.
She would run for another few hours maybe, not tiring at all, she never did. Then, when it was time to stop, she would. And the ocean would embrace her, cold at first, but then very familiar and warm and just good.
But for now...rush, rush, rush...

There was a man on the train today, facing the doors with their black glass, who was solving the new york times cross word puzzle a speed that looked as if he were just copying letters by from a solution sheet in the back of his head. Behind him was man in a powerful suit, with a powerful tie, facing the door as well, talking silently to his own reflection. He looked passionately angry. His right hand would let go of the steel bars from time to time, just to complete an especially powerful sentence. He left the train on 59th street. Somebody would be in trouble today. Even if it was just him.

One advantage of posting the content of my moleskines is the distance I have to the images posted. I often look at the drawings and have to try to somehow interpret what it might have been that I really wanted to do. Where was I? What time of the day was it? I am a bit of an observer. And I can be lazy. I can just stop drawing for a week and actually even stop writing for a month and nobody might notice, including myself. I can just post the 70 pages or so in a month and not really be connected to the things that are happening around me. Hmm.
What if the drawings here were more of a live event. What if the drawings here were drawn on the day when they were posted. It would be much more pressure for me but it would also be more fun maybe?
I could scan some of the drawings I make in a (good) day, or I could just draw directly into software and post these images. (No scanning necessary.)
Hmm. Let's try that. It might just fail, it might not work, it might be too much pressure. I can not promise anything.
To make things as simple as possible, the images I will post will be of the same format, not pop up and... they might be either very simple, or be based on previous drawings. Could this be fun?
Let's see what will evolve here. Here we go...

For the last few weeks it was all "full speed ahead" and "pack more hours in the day." My slower thoughts and emotions are barely catching up now. The fast ones easily followed. I am more effective, more focused, faster, more efficient. But it feels a bit strange to have left my sense of curiosity somewhere around the corner behind me. If this place here did not exist, I would probably think that it is not me. I would probably just fall under the impression that the world around me has changed and that certain things just need to be "dealt with" rather than explored or slowly nurtured. But because this little site exists and because it works so well as a tool to monitor myself (don't you just love this kind of language?) I can clearly see that I have optimized in some of the wrong departments. (Some of the right ones as well, it is not all negative growth...)
If you had to deal with me recently and have noticed a change for the negative, please forgive. I have spent the last few weeks in this very specific mode... Hmm... I just wish my mind would calm down already, so I can gather my thoughts and maybe open my eyes and not just look but also see again. (Thank you for your patience.)

When I drew the buildings posted here for the last two days, I dreamed of architecture that would be in greatest possible harmony with nature. It somehow made sense that buildings could be layers upon layers upon layers of natural material and not just steel and glass and scrap wood. : )
Little did I know that buildings that are incredibly similar to my little drawings were being built in various parts of the world for years. I came across a little photograph in the upcoming issue of the New York Times Magazine and I think you will like what you'll see as much as I do... Take a look at these incredible houses. Developed by Nader Khalili to provide housing for space travelers and space settlers of the Moon and even Mars, these houses are highly portable before assembly and just incredibly in harmony with nature after being built. The material used to build these structures is affordable (tubes for a "three bedroom" house is about $1500) and biodegradable.
Users fill the provided biodegradable plastic tubes with "whatever they find on the ground", mostly soil that is already there, for free, no purchase, no transportation, barely any tools necessary. The soil filled tubes then become the walls of little buildings that just feel like shelter and are somehow really beautiful. They remain cool in the summer time and provide warmth in the winter time. Why would anybody still want to use Asbestos and Formaldehyde to put their house together? : ) I am amazed, in a really, really good way.
Visit CalEarth.org to find out more.

Could we just give them a soft self regenerating skin? Could they just absorb certain forces, maybe give in in some ways? Maybe their growth could be very slow. Maybe they would start out now with the materials we know and then the higher floors would be added one after the next, year by year and so the materials would become er and better and more efficient... or just different. What if Architecture went away from the all-mighty narcissistic thing it sometimes can be to a simpler setting of rules. Let's make a soft building, maybe one that grows and is alive...
maybe this would be a nice start...
I know they look like pancakes. Imagine each floor could be very different...
: )

Almost there, almost there... pages filled with joy. The soft car says hello (hi). and there is camouflage on sneakers and skulls and things. We are almost there, there just a few more pages to go. It has been 33 days with this particular book, can you believe this? Hmm... more to come...(have to run)

"how is it going?, can I have a large and sweet coffee and a sesame bagel with butter please?"
"yeahwhenyoworkalldayitistoughman,tough"
"yeah."
"weatherhasbeennicethough,hereyago, 1.50"
"thanks"

The carts actually do not look like that. Some have a little roof, most are bigger. And the bagels are usually bigger too. Or smaller? Or about that size.
Gosh, I need some rest.

2003.05.13 07:51:24
Search: query for 'bloody pollock'

2003.05.13 07:51:39
Search: query for 'bloody pollock'

2003.05.13 07:51:52
Search: query for 'bloody damn it witold i can't spell pollack.'

2003.05.13 07:52:15
Search: query for 'bloody'

IP address kept private... : )

"So what would you rather be," asked Tshirp, "that dog by the bagel cart or that police-car waiting for the next suspect?"
"What about the train?, can I choose to be the train? Look it is packed with children. They are probably heading for the ferry."
"Okay: Train, Police-car or dog?"
"Well, all of them can be pretty fast, right? The dog is a real sprinter, I have been watching him for a while now. And some humans find him cute, so they feed him all kinds of things when he only wags his tail long enough. The police car not only runs fast, it can turn on those colorful s and speed down Broadway just for fun, or when somebody calls for it. Day or night. It happens all the time.... And the train? It is one powerful train, packed with stories and dreams and things and it just goes to some great places 24/7... nice."
"Yes, they can all do pretty amazing things, can't they?"
"Yeah. Pretty wild stuff."
"so? which one do you want to be?"
"do you want to fly over there and grab some of the leftover donuts by the police car?"
"sure... you did not answer my question though."
"I think I did."
"no you did not."
"this was my answer.... let's fly."
"you are silly."
"yeah, let's go."

There were baloons in the Indian restaurant tonight. H.M.D. means Happy Mother's Day, of course. My mother is in Germany today. She is certainly very sad that I am not there. Of course.
I came across this old picture of my mother and me in front of the building in which I basically grew up in Poland. (The windows by the top edge of the photograph belonged to the east side of our apartment...)
The other, older boy in the picture was the neighbour Andrzej Luzniak (He was the boy who had hamsters and fish and other exciting little animals). The girl holding the jaPod (ja=i in Polish) in the front was his older sister Alina. (I found her very attractive, but obviously out of my league. You can see how frightened I am...)
What does this all have to do with Mother's day? I am afraid not very much. I just think my mother would be deed to see this picture now. Maybe when she comes across this site again. Hi mom. (Can you see me waving?)

Would you like to see a 5.6MB (mpeg) reason why I kept smiling all afternoon?
It is a little guy called cinnamoroll. And things are just going ON...
via stereotypography

The entire city was painted white by this fog. I can not see further than two blocks from here. It is as if Manhattan were built inside of a cloud.
A cook and a delivery-man wrestled on the sidewalk in front of their restaurant on 98th street. The cook won twice, smashing the other guy to the chewing gum marked pavement. One time the defeated man fell on his back, the other time the cook ended up on top of the other man, who seemingly kissed the pavement. They were both laughing. It was a very realistic looking game. Two old women commented on the scene in Portugese. They were half a block away. It is possible that they were commenting on something else.
More stores are closing on Broadway. There will be yet another bank a block away from here.
The shoe store on 93rd had my now severely fixed up camper-shoes for a relatively good price. I asked the salesman to bring me a Black size 43. He came back after about 10 minutes. "I do not have a 43. I have a 44 in a different color." He opened the box containing something that looked nothing like what I actually almost considered to buy. As I was leaving the store, another salesman tried to convince me that the shoes I wanted only existed in a different size and in a different color, if at all.
I have to work on an urgent project. I will now just listen to some music and dive into my productivity suit(e).
Wish I had slept better. Three hours are just really not enough. And even the time spent resting was a strange concoction of bizzarre dreams involving hostile international office takeovers and incredible architectonic landscapes.
Later will be here sooner than I would like it to be. And thus I must do something now.

Can I be excited about a page? (I like this one. Or these.) On the left hand side is the drawing made on the inside of a subway car with the view from the last car of the one train in the 72nd street station, which is currently still very intensly under construction. The drawing is at a good level of confidence. The lines fall into the right places. There was no questioning. This is a drawing that just poured into the little book in probably 90 seconds.
And on the right hand side is a collection of objects and things from the 50th street station on the 1/9 line. With plenty of handheld devices...
The little guy is probably from the "Alice: The way out" Mosaic (1994) by Liliana Porter. (And built by Miotto Mosaics.) But he looks as if he were somehow a very close friend of one of S.britt's characters. (Not as excellent as his little guys, of course, but still, a friend.)
I think I really like this page (these pages).
...Or maybe it is simply time for me to go to sleep and not type up blog entries in the middle of a weekend night. All good, all good.

One night in the last car of the 1 train a man slept on the seats right next to his cart. The cart was one of those densly packed life bubbles, filled with everything this man possessed perhaps? The owner of the cart was probably dreaming of pushing this cart somewhere, or maybe something completely unpredictable. He was in a private, very real, present, actual life bubble...
A day later, on the same train, in a different car, squeezed between other commuters was another man. His thin file pressed between his legs, he was poking around the screen of a brightly lit pocketPC. It was quite obvious that the software was more in control of him than he was in control of the software. He also was in a bubble, yet is was a very different one, a more scripted, scentless, tasteless, private bubble... He was in a completely different place.
And now they are both on the same page. Or wait. the man with the cart did not make it into the picture...

The man at the entrance of the subway station asked me to help him out with the ride. I told him I was sorry, and I lied. I just did not want to pull out my cash right there, after midnight outside of a subway station with nobody else around. Well, the token booth clerk was there, probably watching me open the door for him, but somehow I forgot. All not the best setup, I know. I pulled my metrocard through the turnstile, there was the typical loud beep, and the little LCD panel just said: GO. Behind me, the man asked the person in the token booth for the subway ride. There was another beep, and the man whom I just refused to help was the man for whom I now opened the door again. "This is amazing," I said. "Glad she let you in."
"Yeah, some people just have a heart." he said.

One single seat at the bar, waiting for the soup. There are flames everywhere, a large pan with just a little water is used to make gyoza. Some of the best in town. Whatever the definition of "town" is.
I have yet to discover what the various liquids in these old kikoman sauce bottles might be. I use pepper on my ramen. I keep certain things in the liquid until I am ready to lift the big bowl and to drink the soup.
Sapporo does not accept credit cards. For some odd reason the best places I know do not accept credit cards. Tawaraya in Frankfurt did not accept them, back then. When Suzuki San would make a "SuTaMiNa-Ramen" in a completely different way for me, almost every day for years. I did not understood what he meant by making these strange grunting sounds when serving it to me... or by moving the fist as if he were punching a park meter... He is quite a brilliant chef. It was at Tawaraya where I met "HachiJi Miyu-Pun San" (spelling must be very off here...), the Sushi Master from Mikuni in Frankfurt. (Probably the best place in Frankfurt for sushi.) The entire staff of Mikuni would visit Tawaraya on friday nights to get a good night drink. (Or two, or ten.) The sushi master was barely holding onto his chair when he explained to me how to properly eat sushi with three fingers. If I really wanted to use chopsticks, I should at least turn the sushi pieces into the right position. This would also show how good the chef is.
The fish of his pieces would never separate from the rice. He had been a sushi master for almost 20 years... and that was about ten years ago...
Time to leave the house. Today will be a packed day again. I am looking forward to a real night of sleep.

Better, better, smaller, faster, quicker, more agile, more effective, higher, swifter, wider, cheaper, more successful, richer, tastier, more advanced, ahead of the pack, better... or is it?
How many mutations are really necessary? Is everything we come up with a result on the path towards another semi-solution, as good as it gets, for now? Good enough? The peak of what we can come up with now?
"Yeah, space is the place these days..." the man next to me actually said that at his lunch break. His conversation partner was one of those bare-bone optimized guys with really advanced forearms and sleek glasses.
Thoughts are like ricochet when spun this early in the morning after several hours of preemptive work.
Would you like coffee with that? and sweet please.
Good morning.

how far can you fly on three hours of sleep my friend? how high can you climb when your whole skin is this large, extremely sensitive outer hull that keeps bumping into things. Things like the inside of the wrist band of the watch or the insides of your shoes, or that collar on that shirt of yours. And then there is this constant noise, this steady high volume city noise, a carpet of noise, a field of noise, a meadow of sounds, a forest of words, and things and memories and pictures and it is all just the same and it does not matter now, because I will take a little nap before I will continue working on that stuff that I have to have ready by tomorrow. rock on brother, push yourself to yet another one of those limits. g'nite.

Again in the last car at night, with a little black book and a strange silver fountain pen. The only person without a suitcase. There in the corner. Placed in the right seat to get out on 96th street.
And then again early in the morning, in a packed car, barely able to open the little moleskine in the crowd. A nervous woman breathing into my sleeve. A heavy set man working his way through little menus on the screen of his pocket PC. Not quite sure why I would decide to draw an odd spaceman, just a day before Columbia was about to return from space. I did not even know.

Who would have thought that en eye doctor appointment could turn into such an adventure. The entire procedure at the office was not the wildest thing I ever had to go through. I had to stare into some machines, some with cute little pictures of a floating baloon. There were bright s in various colors, there were letters in various sizes. The ones I was able to read easily had a tiny 20/20 right next to them, so I guess I am pretty okay. The doctor told me I was fine. She then went on to drip various liquids into my eyes, and then she did some other tests which "did not hurt a bit." After the tests I was told what these little floaters were all about which I kept seeing in front of me. Apparently eyes age and so the substance within the eye becomes more flaky, which leads to these virtual artifacts. I am just getting older. That's all. I am otherwise fine.
I will return to this very friendly eye doctor in a year or so.
"You are like those three year olds," she said "first they come in screaming and then they do not want to leave." I had not screamed, but I really wanted her to put on that funny helmet again and to shine into my eye with this large bulb. I also wanted to see the little balloon again. My body probably just wanted some more novocaine. yey.
I was ready to leave the practice, just wanted to finish this silly article I had started in the waiting room. Hmm, except all I could suddenly see were these large blobs which were the illustrations, and between them this grey mush, which must have originally been the text. I could not really see.
I left the practice, found my way into the lobby of the old apartment building, looked into the mirror and even though I only appeared as a blob, I was a blob with completely opened pupils. They were big. I was a blurry squirrel.
The outside was absolutely too bright for my taste. I have no idea what possessed me to walk home instead of taking a cab. One reason could have been that there were just many yellow blobs on Park avenue, who knows if there were any cabs among them.
I entered the park. The sounds around me became what I saw. Never before have I perceived the park as being so noisy.
And then there were these really cute looking humanoid blobs everywhere. Really funny and many, many of them. I wanted to record a little blog entry, since I could obviously not write... so I was looking for something that might look like an empty bench. I somehow found myself in the Ramble, the portion of from which the city can not be seen. I pulled out my PowerBook, I opened it, and all I saw was this blurry thing of a screen. How was I supposed to record anything with this? The computer was somehow useless. I tried to look for the "access" control panel, found it, looked at it and only saw a large button that said "turn zoom off" underneath tiny instructions obviously for the seeing elite, not for me. I eventually figured out that the key-combination was apple-option-+ ... the screen zoomed like crazy, I saw 6 letters or so on my screen. I used the apple-option-minus shortcut to get the characters down to a comfortable walnut size. I am still at this point btw. stil typing as if I were an ant, jumping from key to key. Gigantic letters flash up on my screen. I can barely see.
I had to put my computer away. A blob dressed in white socks first passed me from left to right, then from the other side. He then sat very close to me on a bench and I could feel that he was ready to just grab my computer and run. Not something I wanted to risk, with my eyes squinting so I could see anything at all. The recording bit did not work anyway. I could not find a way to record with my osX. I could have probably asked the squirrel which later came to visit as I was sitting on a different bench. And you know what?, even if it had not been a squirrel, I would not really know. It was a blob.
I left the park around the corner of the American Museum of Natural History. I tried to pick paths which had no bipedal blobs on them and then almost closed my eyes and walked rather slowly. I made it to Amsterdam avenue at last and gave it up, just grabbed a cab. I am now at home. My screen has a resolution of 300x200 or maybe less. I will now close my eyes and wait for the blurriness to go away. I hope it will. I have deadlines to keep... hmm...

The parking meter was obviously very hungry. He was the new kind, the hip-wireless kind, the one that feels very important because it prints little shiny scraps of paper for high dollar amounts. In any other location a cash register was just a sidekick, in any other location the receipt was optional. Not here. Here it was all about the receipt. Cash for receipt. Give him cash, and you may get some protection. For a limited time only. Very limited.
The parking meter would sometimes fantasize of printing some really wrong tickets. Let's say one that expired days ago. He would not print a series of them, of course, that would cost him his position. But maybe one, one single one? Maybe for a large car with an unfriendly driver? That would be a powerful move.
Ideally this ticket would be written for somebody who is on the most wanted list. The parking meter imagined to be the one who wrote the wrong ticket for Osama Bin Laden, as he parked his unmarked car right in front of the TGI Friday on 49th and 7th. Imagine the newscast on the jumbotron not far from here. Osama caught thanks to a swift move by a parking meter. They would probably give him a new paint job. Maybe he would get better security guards. The two concrete sticks next to him did not look as if they could hold back a chevy impala, not to mention a hummer.
On the other side of the street, a planter waited for rain. It was time to feed the kids again. The grass, the bugs, the mold spores. And it was also about time that the bag of cash buried deep in the soil finally turned into something useful. A bunch of earthworms were working on this one though. (For several years now.)

Posting Moleskine pages barely counts as posting. At least for me it barely counts as posting. And did you notice that the descriptions are turning shorter and shorter as well? "On the left hand side: a lamp, on the right hand side: something else." Sad. What happened to the observations and the listening in on what the universe has to say?
Hmm. The last few days have been a bit dense and heavy and somehow deep. (Not in a good way deep.) I would wake up in the middle of the night to take a breather and then fall asleep, upright, on the sofa. Barely breathing. Exciting, isn't it? I used to get asthma attacks in Germany during this early May season. This is the time when the streets in the city where I used to live were (and probably still are) covered in a thick layer of yellow powder. Pollen. Wonderful. Everywhere. Not the best thing for a kid who grew up in the first heavy industrial area of central Europe. I mean, where I grew up there would be sud and dirt in the air, not sharp edged pollen and other strange spores sent into the atmosphere by overly excited trees. And so I turned into a pathetic allergy case. My spring time would be consistently the time of tears and sniffing and barely getting any sleep.
New York is a bit of a healer for me. The ocean is close, the winds are good, nature is 98% man made. This is my kind of town. So I should not really complain. I do get some sleep. I do get some rest. I can breathe and get to see things using my eyes. Even in May.
So why am I not writing more? Sitting awake on the sofa in the middle of the night sounds like the perfect setting for some jolly good stories.
I somehow work too much during the day. I need to slow down a tiny bit. Maybe soon. Maybe once some of the projects go into a er phase. Hmm... until then... "on the right hand side: a lamp"... "On the left hand side..." or was it the other way round?

Really subway drawings today. The one on the left is a in the 96th street station, going downtown. It does not look exactly like this, of course, the number might be correct though.
The drawing on the right is the view out of the door window of a subway car. The local train, number 9, going downtown. Drawn most likely around 9am in January, standing pressed against the glass. Trains tend to be packed this time of day. The spot right next to the door is the most quiet spot and the next best thing to getting an actual seat.
A subway ride in New York now costs $2... still less than the ride on a Frankfurt subway. : )

There I was, waiting for the doctor to come in and check my wrist. It felt like a very typical room in a doctor's practice. On the wall was a box for x-ray films. Below a counter with many interesting containers. The lonely stool on rolls looked like a conversation partner. I had just a few minutes, and so now we have a little drawing, or two.

Many, many tiny little ideas. On two more pages. Drawings as simple as only possible. Objects found on Subway platforms, between the cars of trains, between moments. It is a bit difficult to write an introduction to these dense pages. There are just so many elements and I do not want to turn into a tour guide. So the introduction is brief again today.
Maybe a little translation could help. The German word:"drin" means "inside" a "Mitten" is a "Fausthandschuh" in German. "Mitten drin" in German, means "right in the midst of things." So now you know... silly games with Language(s).

One thousand pictures in my pocket. Some of the pages are like drawers in the room of a dadaist child. Fragments, pieces, particles, adventures in visual shorthand. There is the Coke-Milk, there is the sawn together egg, a lamp man, a galleon, somebody with an odd flag, a star-deer-alien watching the event of claiming a planet?.
Have a wonderful friday.

My found this site on Google. I had told him about it, I had sent him links, I had tried to explain. He still found it on Google. My parents do not speak English, I am the only child, they live in Germany, I picked New York as my home. They call on weekends. I hoped that we could email each other perhaps. I got them an iMac, years ago. There were some issues with the computer. I had just assumed too much. It is not as easy as it seems to just grab a mouse and go. So it took time.
My found this site on Google, last weekend. He explored it, he printed out some of the drawings, my parents looked at them very critically, they finally decided to call. My mother was on the phone and she had this motherly undertone of urgency in her voice. Something was terribly wrong with the drawing in which there are letters behind me and where there is a girl, whom she knows, with a propeller coming out of her head. In this particular drawing, I forgot to zip my fly.
I laughed out loud. Yes, not only did I forget to zip the fly, the pants have no pockets, and they are thus pants for girls. Why would I wear pants for girls?
She did not like the drawing. And I should zip the fly.
I was a bit confused, she was still looking at the drawing, she added... "Oh, here are the pockets. The pants are okay." I thanked her. I then went on to explain that this was not really me she was looking at. What she was commenting on was a drawing, not even, she was looking at the printout of a scan of a drawing that I happened to make on a packed subway.
Then the questions about the letters began. I had to explain that some of the drawings are a bit like going with a recording device through the morning subway. I pick up some bits here, there are some pieces there. Once I am done with the pages, I just turn them, but until then, elements of the drawing can just accumulate and they can create some very intriguing or in this case... obviously disturbing arrangements. She gave the phone to my .
He was more technical about the pieces. He noted that many of them seem to have been folded in half. I had to explain that they were pages from a little book. The next question was about the arrangement of the fingers on the hands of the figures in many of the drawings. I just explained that it was a bit of a habit for me to draw hands this way. And that I started drawing hands like this when I was maybe 16 or so and when I really loved work by Oskar Kokoschka and then even more Egon Schiele... Though I did not want him to look up these guys on Google, so I just rushed through the descriptions.

It was so cold on this day in January that snow would freeze solid and the clouds would shiver in the sky. And here I was, in layers and layers of wintery clothing dreaming of little things again. Many of these are observations (I was certainly not dreaming of "Made In China" I think...
Gosh, so much I have to post still, and so little time. Watch this space... (from time to time...)