March 2005 Archives

I had no idea that the sun ever managed to hit a very particular spot on the wall in the kitchen. It did this morning. It really did. Somewhere between 3am and 7am there were shadows of plants slowly crawling across the wall. They were shadows of my rubber orca, the jade, the two avocado brothers, the bunny cookies cast no shadow... though eventually the fire escape did... I somehow felt better then. Much better. Oh, and it seems that more than four bird families will try to create nests right above my window, in the molding of the building here and the neighboring buildings too... I am excited about this. The winged candidates for the prime spots arrived early this morning, little twigs in their beaks. They were sparrows, the shakespearian central park birds. Their chirps still had that British accent acquired in London's parks. The music on the headphones felt like a perfect soundtrack for at least a few steps on the way to the train. It is going to rain a little more, but then, yes then... then it is soon going to be time to find some good airconditioners... and find some way to get that bird guano off the windows. Oh, this is going to be fantastic. Can't wait to take walks to Kensington and maybe even further... Coney Island perhaps? Oh, yes...

all bookmarks were just wiped out. not on purpose, of course, it was a silly mistake. (I am not sure where it began.) did not manage to even get the paper this weekend. somehow wanted to get it, but it did not happen. somehow did not manage to. not even that. so odd. maybe the delivery would be a great option again, though it might not be. the second glass of orange juice and i still feel like a wet towel. a towel that has been wet for a while, curled up under the sink, somewhere in an apartment... no, not that bad. just a wet towel. maybe folded. into a triangle. how is that? there are flowers about to really grow wild on basquiat's grave. somebody had also burned incents. there was a dry rose on top of the headstone. the clowns are still on the gravestone in the next lot. still in the same position... the basquiat show at the brooklyn museum felt a bit claustrophobic. the couples visiting looked stunning, there were some slightly insane people, like maybe that woman who would speak to anybody, loudly, out of her own devices. the visitors overall were a very diverse bunch. definitely local bunch... i know there is no such thing? i like the drawings most. the paintings are a bit large, though still dense enough to be their size. i like the paintings when they are layers upon layers of smaller drawings. maybe my mind is shrinking... maybe that's what is happening... i like the smaller drawings. it is a good show. it is hidden, on high floors, in a museum that feels a bit like a school-house, or maybe some other special institution. the rubens show at the met felt not as brilliant as hoped. the drawings here appeared as if rubens had been on the phone while drawing. or maybe the drawings were made to give clear instructions to an assistant. Some copies of the drawings were superior to the originals. that's dangerous... hmm... p p rubbens... the show felt a bit frustrating. small words in my head. again and again and again and again... sleep is a beautiful thing. and i will now go and get some more of that.

the tulips on the table next to me have almost rubbery looking leaves, there are twists and turns in them and once open, these reveal much smaller leaves that look like feathers on a singing bird. i pressed some button too many times recently and now I have a pile of fabric swatches sent to me from crate and barrel. the order confirmation screen looked like an error message, and so i kept pressing again and again and again... i received five or so envelopes. nice. it will take a long time before i manage to get a sofa. (and it has nothing to do with the swatches.) i only use tables and chairs and books and computers. there are no sofas or televisions in my house. and i do not miss television, though maybe not having the flickering screen somehow makes me less chatty. i also stopped building conversations that depend on anticipation and procrastination... there are so many incredible shows at the new york museums these days, I have no idea why I could possibly still be sitting at home... have a wonderful day. well, it already is a wonderful day... just have it.

no sleep, not much sleep, barely any. the site is back out of the milky whiteness of empty files. no sleep, not much sleep, barely any. the room is cold tonight. and it is good this way. it is okay. it is warm under covers. and this is where i should be right now. moved the table closer to the kitchen. sitting on the only red chair in my apartment. my little garden on the window looks like a floral freak show. i am bad at cutting back plants. the different sizes of leaves are just a joke. i will need to learn more. just touched the heater and it is hot. it is just to incredibly windy and cold outside, that's why. no sleep, not much sleep, barely any. i sat in front of a white page for twenty minutes. then started drawing with a really hard pencil. then erased everything. then sat in front of a white piece of paper again. then read some old diary entries. i used to have pathetic thoughts. good. this is a sign of progress. it used to be much scarier when i would pick up one of my many books and read something written years prior and realise that that younger me was a much brighter shining light than the dimlit reader... so being able to smile over some obviously underdeveloped thoughts is a really great thing. weiter so. mixed up languages again today. spoke to todd levin in german for a sentence or two. the few days before that, my brain would try to distract me with clearly pronounced polish sentences. just like that, out of nowhere, there would be people passing on orders to other people passing on orders. no sleep, not much of it, barely any. how come it took me this long to discover that the book store two blocks from here is actually a big one, only in the basement. it took me this long. good. now i know. at least. there are probably billions of things which will take me longer than i have life for. sleep. it is calling me now. at least a brief nap. it is very much needed. very much. so glad to have this website back. really glad. oh and time sometimes matters and sometimes it really does not. going to sleep a little now.

just inches from the ground, with the chin pointing forward, charging ahead at ever increasing speeds. the air is cool, not cold. the grass is ever greener ahead. do not look back.

and you know what, spring is running towards us in giant flip flops right now, as the bird on the roof here sings his daily improving potpourri of sounds. I do not know what kind of a bird it might be, but the song contains samples of toys, somebody whistling at somebody else (yes, that way), as well as some bits and pieces of future love songs. Clear proof that spring is nearly here. I can’t wait. (At least until my hay fever knocks me out big time and the need for an air conditioning bumps breathing off the top ten list of important things...)

the heat is on this morning in my apartment we are talking full blown unstoppable furnace heat as if i were inside of a stove pipe kind of heat and opening the windows does not even help and taking of all well almost all of my clothes does not help and maybe i will need to take a cold shower because this heat is making my ears glow and there soon will be scorch marks all over me perhaps and i should not complain because i just went out to get my dry cleaning and i had so much heat stored in me that i did not even need a jacket and the birds began to sing as i was walking up third street and spring flowers bloomed randomly as if the sun had rushed to make it spring and i will need to rush now as i am going to be in the air in a few hours expect a glowing dot in the air today that would be me oh and in the heat i forgot all of the punctuation and i guess it is never too late to add that so here it comes ,.,,,,,,.,,,,. ,,. : )

The site went white. Just like that. Not all of it. Only this part here. I received several emails asking me why. I do not know why. I guess it wanted to express something... software meditation. Ever wondered what the web looks like from the point of view of the web? If the owner of a cat feels like a bipedal can opener to the cat, what do we look like to the web? Are we tiny feeding machines? Are we the incomplete, imperfect, mortal storytellers, just here temporarily, here to feed the immortal, all knowing monster of total knowledge? When I looked at the code in firefox, this page here appeared as an "empty body". So very appropriate. Just an empty body. It appeared this way. The back end still knew what had to be rendered on this page here... it just pretended to be a corpse. yes. I now scheduled an upgrade of the site, a reincarnation. I do not know how to do this kind of thing, so if you are reading this then either because you are the person upgrading the site or because it has been upgraded by the sixapart team. I just write here. I just post pictures. Sometimes. I am just a tiny can opener to my minuscule head of this global monster. Caution. I am switching scale: I have never been given brushes before. I did not realize it until last night. Nobody has ever given me brushes. Paper. More painting material. Never before. I feel as if I had been given a ball of twine and a gigantic sword. It is about time to enter the labyrinth and finally slain that minotaur. I have certainly been whining about wanting to do that for a really good while now. The monster has sharpened its claws, it has transformed itself, it multiplied, it is a new generation by now... so it is about time... plus some years... but it is now. so now is the right time. Last night I walked up to the innocent looking entrance, and I threw some dangerously looking moves. A giant roar was the answer. I noticed that I was wearing no armor. I went to sleep. For now. I am going to walk up to the entrance again tonight. I think I will. I think. I will. I. Think. I. Will. And I will walk up to that entrance again and again. I am going to walk in. I am going to do whatever needs to get done. I have to...

sweet dreams are made... is playing over the speakers. hippies are drunk at the table next to me. the waitress had plenty of garlic some time earlier today. i am at the last open thai place in santa monica and for some reason my blog does not render... hmm... food and sleep... i am almost there...

With the apartment being on the level of tree crowns, between tree crowns, with the windows open it might as well be a tree crown, with the birds out now, more and more, singing more and more, more and more of their songs, this is exactly where i want to be right now.

The sun was almost high visible over the roofs of the buildings. I was almost perfectly dressed for this kind of cold weather. I had almost bought myself a coffee. The bus arrived just minutes later. The metro card was almost expired. The highway was almost filled. It was almost eight. The guard was almost done with the opening of the gate. "I will let you through, but the gate is really not yet open." A morning visit that other giant park down the avenue, the other battle field, the other, or maybe the main. Maybe this is the actual park, the one with the better views, the hills that are still the original ones, the trees planted sparsly. Stones planted in masses. Stones planted to mark places where human remains have been planted. For more than a hundred and fifty years now. I was in the park with about 600,000 people and yet the only sound I could hear were my shoes on the snow, the wind in the branches, the hushed sound of a dirty man passing me by with a strangely loaded bag. (I later saw him play with toys he had brought with him, under a tree, secretly... definitely not for the first time...) I had no idea I would ever get this close to Peter Cooper or Mr. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph. I never imagined that I would be just feet away from Jean Michel Basquiat. Though it really took a while to find him, under the snow, between two Italian "loved ones"... I spent a good time with Basquiat, watched the snow melt away in the sun, watched the water flow from the letters, watched the color of the stone change. All in complete silence... or at least so it seemed... It would be simplistic to say that one is being reminded of one's own mortality in a cemetery. One is as much reminded of life. One is as much reminded of stupidity, bombast, kindness, bad taste, greed, and definitely love. Love in all expected and unexpected shapes. The clowns on top of the grave next to Basquiat's were certainly expressions of love. So were the three monkeys in rusty sleds next to a marble bench near the grave of the "perfect daughter". The photographs of the two policemen who died in the line of duty in the 80's were placed there with as much love as that stone next to one of them: "#1 dad." A washed out Valentine's card to "Joe" from his wife, somewhere on the walkway in the snow felt incredibly loving. The poem written by a man for his Nel was so gentle, it might have helped to let the two giant cypresses in front of it grow as high as they did. And even the dates on the stones seemed to be expressions of love. Couples passing just months apart, one probably not able to survive the grief of losing the other. And there were the tracks in the snow, leading to different graves, some with flowers, some decorated with taped photographs of kids, the wedding that took place decades after the stone had been erected, a letter written and stuck in front of that photograph hidden under the medallion on the stone, little boulders on top of some headstones. Others were just single stones in the snow. Anne, mom, dad... On the steps leading to the lot of a family, complete with two cornerstones spelling out: "our" and "home", a quote: "When I die I will go to heaven, because I spent my life in hell..." A father and his two daughters seemed to throw a baseball by the mother's grave. I really like the Greenwood Cemetery... I would like to go back there... four hours are nothing compared to eternity...

Fell asleep on the wrong train, then, awaken, transferred to the wrong train across the plattform. Found myself alone in a giant station more than forty blocks away from home. Took the next train back. It was just me it seemed... then a new transfer, then home. Thrown around town in giant machines. Last time I fell asleep on the train was last year. In a different borough. It was a different me then. No man steps into the same train twice I guess?

And I turned into a bit of an invited fly on the wall. Or maybe I was more appropriately a little amphibian animal out of a jar... no both of these descriptions somehow subtly indicate that I was not comfortable. Quite the opposite was the case. I felt incredibly great, sitting in the last row of a very intimate introduction to a world somehow too coded for some, mysterious for others, loved, loved and adored by me. All visible and invisible aspects of it... And each one of the images flickering onto the wall triggered such an amazing palette of memories... real and imagined. The melting men, the mounted horses, the rebuilding of an environment by biting down trees, the ever growing hair, the bird cages, the tigers waiting patiently to be mended. And my chest opened and there were rabbits, the invisible kind, transparent bunnies, in the room, right there, jumping through the cone of informed light, embracing a girl in a floral skirt. I was even happier now than the black and white image in the two frames of a photo strip mounted to the refrigerator with a magnetic long ear buddy. And I felt that this was somehow the beginning of even greater, deeper, longer lasting happiness. Later that night we walked through the snow to the train and to the quiet home. And I have to find pieces of paper to write down the right expression of my happiness, as this here seems to be the slightly wrong wall. Here I am at this old silver painted bridge table, in a quiet room with a far away view. The walls are empty, and so is the floor. I will need to leave in a few moments. But I feel like a smile. God, and it is not even spring.