:: Witold Riedel :: NYC ::

a few days ago, i think

2010-01-30T03:23:27Z

there is no checkbox for that.

walked past panel after panel with photographs of clint eastwood. "clint eastwood" he said, as i entered the apartment for the first time and it felt like it was also the last.
my fault.

then there was the little blue car. it was italian but very happy to drive all the way, for almost seven hours. just to get lost in the streets that somehow did not make sense.
at least it was the middle of the night. the days were the true horror.
i did not like the traffic during the day.
i loved the city. i just really did not like the traffic. it was so much worse than new york.

and then that walk the other day. i knew that i was feeling something. and i knew that it was a strong feeling somehow. except that by thinking that i was feeling something, the feeling itself became an abstraction, a bit of an unbelievable tale. removed.

there was the flag. such a simple flag it was. so beautiful though. and it did feel like a stone was taken off my chest. the reaction is usually very different with flags.

i wondered what the city must have felt like before there were cars. before there were large flooding lights, the giant projections of illumination onto whatever someone deemed interesting.

and tourists everywhere. taking pictures with the oddest little things. and pointing. and smiling. as if they had just managed to capture the city.
and the city smiled and grabbed them by their future memories.
it would never let go. from now on, never.

there might be a checkbox for that. maybe somewhere there is one. but it is as bad of a description as one containing thousands of words.
why does this place always smell like a beginning?

another bowl of tea, or how little can be revealed in a seemingly meaningless post?

2010-01-03T21:11:36Z

my office at home currently smells like the end of a catholic mass (i was cleaning the place and came across some old german incense. no priests were harmed.)
the books on my shelves are no better organized than when the "vacation" began a few weeks ago, last decade. and the snowflakes outside look a little bit like razor wire. so maybe leaving the house would be a very bad idea now.
especially since the sun is setting and the music streaming from the living room is quite pleasant, actually.
my 2010 horoscope on one of the polish newspaper websites i tend to visit predicted a year of confusion and something probably best described as doom.
glad it was not a chinese fortune teller telling me that i should not fly this year. that has already happened. and there is a nice book about a similar experience, about 17 years ago.

i should probably have another bowl of tea. is it good to drink tea until the mouth goes numb and my insides turn that freshly plucked, ground, bright green?

there are many more questions now than there were just a few days ago. and they are hard and challenging and actually pretty good. and they are the kind i could never dream of answering myself. the best kind.

hmm... another bowl of tea?

casual afternoon thoughts at 7:47am

2010-01-02T12:42:03Z

this is not a book with empty pages.

managed to not say a word to the guy sitting next to me on the plane. even though we appeared to be the same age, we seemed to read the same magazines, and even ordered the same food.
well, i watched "wickie der wikinger" right after "kojak" while he held his iphone close enough to his face to leave smear marks on the screen. with his eyelashes. it was some art movie. mostly blue pictures of people doing something.
it was not my seat anyway. i was supposed to sit two rows back, in a seat i had booked months in advance. but there was this father who wanted to sit next to his sons.
"i speak three languages" said one of the boys, maybe 8, instead of a hello, when i was exchanging my opened blanket for the one that had not been used yet.
"oh that's nice, what are the languages?" " i speak english, german, and french."
"das ist ja sehr schön, dann haben wir zwei sprachen gemeinsam" "ja"
i was a bit upset that we did not have three languages in common. today.
perhaps the boy will end up learning polish at some point in his life, or perhaps i will finally be forced to learn french.
that charles V quote i recently read somewhere made me smile... I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.
he should have probably mixed it up now and then. and would he have used other languages had he not suffered from the habsburg jaw?

we are back in new york. the snow flurries are turning the palette of the brooklyn i can see out of the window now into something that one would probably use a pencil to describe, perhaps some dirtied sienna? a true lead pencil?
it appears to be cold enough for the flakes to actually bounce of each other as they land. they do not feel they should be come one cover of snow yet. right now they want to be new year flakes.

we travelled a bit too quickly in the last few weeks. it is so tempting to just jump on a train to go to a place that is so close and yet so different than the current location. köln is now about an hour away from frankfurt? really? that's pretty much the length of my daily commute today.

what is it like to express anything in more than 140 characters? how many facebook friends does it take to make one who will actually save one's life when it is threatened? not just like or comment on one's fall. or just retweet it.

jetlag can be a beautiful thing. and now i am even 5 minutes early.

saturday afternoon of a sharp edged week

2009-09-19T17:50:11Z

last week was punctured with moments that had a certain density to them, when i had to rush against time, against the stream, against the sun. and circles of rocks fell apart into piles that did not look like anything assembled by human hand. and things had to be brought together again, one word at a time, even the spaces carrying a certain weight. heaviness. meaning.

writing is a pleasant stream when it is free and when it can just develop at its own pace. but when it needs to be very precise and when the message is fragile and already expected to be flawed, then writing is painful and imperfect.
there is no way to say two things at once, there is no way to say precisely the exact thing meant and to hope that at the other end the recipient is going to understand things exactly the way they were... they were what... intended? there? true?
language is just a rough tool to work with at times. it makes possible to summon the entire world as we know it with just a simple set of letters arranged on a string, but on the other hand it can only play with the rules it is given, and it is a linear medium, one that has to rely on the attention and the memory of the writer and the reader too.
sorry for pointing out all the obvious stuff.

spoken language is richer at least. the tone of voice, the smell of the air, the light, a conversation in a shared space has a much richer meaning than a castrated, declawed email. or even a phone call. when language in spoken in a context that expects it to be a certain way, then it is a herculean task to pull back the planks bent into certain shapes, to open the blinds to somehow harmonize the angle of light coming into the conversation.
tough. tough. and also without a net. no preparation. just there. immediately there.

the cat smelled my elbow for a moment, then looked at me an a very concerned way. she fell asleep on my chest for about two hours. she forced me to allow her to heal me at least a little bit.
hope it all works out.

trying to calmly look at myself as if i were a spirit watching my body age at a pace that is very clear. today is a good day.
and there is a big difference between alone and lonely.

Moment left.

2009-09-05T13:04:01Z

The little tree that I had decided to bring over from the Park Slope apartment a few years ago is now beginning to turn gently yellow again. I had removed all leaves from it somewhere in the middle of the season, so it was allowed to age an extra year in 2009. The colors might turn out more vibrant now that it realizes that it is indeed truly going to be fall.
A different tree right next to it, took maybe 9 months to recover from being transplanted into the new and actually smaller pot. I had almost given up on the little guy, and just as a test scratched on the thin bark a few weeks ago. Underneath the color was green. Life. And soon after the leaves came out after all. Spring in July. The fall is recognized here too. The colors are shifting. The tree is getting ready for colder months.

I seem to have more journeys in the next two months than I could have ever expected. There is going to be some traveling to places in the US. Perhaps Kansas, though I am not sure if I will be able to go. Then probably some places on the west coast. Maybe some places on the east coast. Maybe a few more places somewhere closer to the middle of the country.
And then, shortly after columbus day, we will take off and finally go to Japan. It is a bit as if I had been preparing for the trip for decades. And now I feel incredibly not ready. There are such huge gaps in what I would like to know before I go, I am not sure I will be able to bridge them. But I guess the most important thing is to be open and to discover, not to be completely prepared and disappoint one's never truly complete expectations.

One of the challenges is going to be to actually go to Japan and to be there. I have taught myself to work on my trips. And often there is the sense of the presence in one place being the important preparation for some other place.
Very much like what I just mentioned actually.

And then there is the urge to report, and to record. What kind of camera should I bring? What kind of camera should I maybe buy? And what will I write?
Am I going to post our status here, or on Facebook, or Twitter?
"Currently relaxing, far away from it all."... What a lie. Pathetic really.
I wonder how many moments will be truly actually experienced as those that will actually really happen then and there.
And perhaps such a thing does not exist?
Perhaps this very moment was lost to this very reflection here.
What could I have been doing right now?
And what are you doing here?

I guess a new season is coming and it will be followed by the next, then by the next. Other rhythms will define the angle at which we look into the light of the sun.
Pretty much like the little trees I happen to keep as pets out on the balcony.

I need to leave the house today, I guess. Maybe not.

cut your engine.

2009-08-22T10:45:14Z

Not completely sure what time zone I am in right now, or even what precisely a time zone could mean to me being here. There are several motors running in the apartment. The refrigerator is compressing something, the air conditioner is pushing cool air into the room and the little spinners in tivo and friends are busy remembering television broadcasts I will probably not remember once I see them.

Some of my sentences have turned from linear strings to circles, rings, some even bubbles. The visual world is gathering like the road at the end of a blur tunnel when in the left lane at high speeds.

I will need to slow down for at least a few hours this morning. The apartment is littered by objects a busier me has left behind for the me who has a bit more time.
This has happened so often that the busier me actually assumed that time can be just stolen from the less busy me.

And now I am not even sure where to start here.
It is odd how I have to somehow defenestrate myself into calmness.
At least for a few hours I have to.
Let's see if it works.

a small incident involving my head.

2009-08-11T20:18:30Z

There was a bit of a problem with a part related to electricity on our plane from Newark to Copenhagen. The pilot tried restarting the entire system by shutting down everything and then starting it up again. But that did not really help. A part was indeed broken and so we were stuck in an airplane, in the sun, with bad air conditioning... I think for about four hours?

I kept sending emails and little sms messages back home and to the office, until the electricity on the blackberry ran out as well, so I reached for the iPod, the trusted little friend, to teach me some Japanese. Real beginner stuff; I can barely count to three. (And that's probably because I am also a bit of a Mr. itchy knee.)

The earphones I have had for my iPod for a long time now are rather great. They really block out noise without requiring batteries. That's why I got them. I can push them really deep into my ear canal and the world around me quiets down; so the music, or in this case a person counting in Japanese becomes really loud and clear.

Things were going okay, until one of the ear plugs fell out of my ear. The right one just fell out onto the seat. Very annoying because it did not just fall out, it also lost that rubber piece that actually makes the noise cancellation so good.

How was I going to find a little rubber piece stuck somewhere in the seat of a plane, stuck in the airport, with the night really setting in now, and the sweatiness level increasing all around me?
I tried to just move as little as possible. Perhaps the piece fell actually onto me. Maybe it was just there, all I needed to do it to look really thoroughly.
It took me probably a minute to realize that the the piece was not really as lost as I at first thought.

It had never actually fallen out really.
The rubber piece was simply stuck.
In my head.
I could now feel it with the tip of my finger.
A rubbery piece, fitted very snugly in the depths of my head.
Now that was a bit of an unpleasant feeling.

Great. So here I had an adventure on top of an adventure.
I had to share the story with someone. Hopefully someone who could somehow help me. Oh yes, tweezers are no longer permitted on airplanes.

A very friendly flight assistant, she could have been a long lost sister of pippi longstocking with dyed hair, seemed to react to my story and the way I told it.
Here was my iPod. There were my earplugs. One of them was missing a piece.
"Do you know where I lost the piece?"
I would then point to my right ear.
"It is stuck in here."

She wanted to help me. Flight attendants are apparently allowed to bring tweezers on board. She began to ask her fellow flight attendants is they had a "pinzette" that word is apparently the same in Polish and in Danish.
("Tak" means "Thank you" in Danish, yet "Yes" in Polish. And I wonder why.)

I went to the bathroom to check if I was perhaps able to see the object in my ear. The bathrooms on SAS airplanes are rather huge by airline standards. Two windows, all around mirrors. Do I need to say more?
I could not see the piece in my ear. Maybe a shadow. Maybe there were too many mirrors I had to use to actually see anything. All I could really see was that I am losing hair in the back of my head as well.
Big time.

The bathroom did not contain a "Pinzette" just a few towels (frottee), some lotions, cups, some abandoned sewing kit, a shaving kit. Nothing useful really, unless I wanted to sew up or shave my ears.

I left the bathroom and ran into the flight attendant again. She had rubber gloves on, and indeed a nice little Pinzette. She looked excited.
We looked for the brightest spot nearby. It happened to be in front of the still open door of the airplane. We were still grounded. Three airport workers spoke with the purser of the flight, a woman in her 50's maybe, wearing a butter colored dress that somehow matched the idea that butter might have been one of her favorite food groups.
The purser should have been the calmest person on the plane, but she somehow managed to make everyone slightly nervous, trying to look friendly when it was a bit obvious that it did not really come easy for her.

"I have to tell my boss what I am going to do," said my rubbergloved flight attendant.
I was seated on one of those jump seats the crew has to tie themselves to during the very moment of takeoff and landing.
The purser did not really seem to care what was about to happen, and so the flight attendant lowered herself to my height and began operation earplug.
I obviously could not see what she was doing, but it appeared that she was not really pinching the rubber piece very hard, and it kept slipping out of the grip of her tweezers.
What kind of tweezers were they anyway? They looked a bit like the cosmetic equivalent of a hammerhead shark. What I was looking for was something pointy and strong, this was not really going to happen?

"What are you doing?" The purser was here now. She had completed her chat with the airport workers and we were apparently the next little vignette in her walk of worry through the more and more chaotic airplane.
"The tweezers are too big." My friendly flight attendant said.
A brief exchange in Danish, or Swedish followed.
The flight attendant looked at me.
"Are you American Sir?"
I was not sure what she meant by that. I am a legal resident. I am a New Yorker... well,
"I guess I am almost an American, yes, you can speak English to me, why?"
I hoped that was the right answer.
The purser looked at my friendly flight attendant.
"Stop helping him right now. If you make a mistake he is going to sue you."
Her English was not fantastic, but clearly some understanding of the world was really somehow simple...
(And I had apparently not given the correct answer.)
"Maybe we should just..." and she made a movement with her hand that somehow indicated that she would just like to slap me in my face. ...
"We can't do this here right now. Get back to your seat Sir. We will now serve dinner. We will deal with this after dinner."
My poor helper had to take off her rubber gloves... "Don't worry, I have children. I take stuff out of their noses all the time."

Dinner was served.

I felt worse and worse.
What would happen once we closed the airplane door? What happens to the ear canal after takeoff? The pressure changes. And then what?
Was I destined to carry a piece of rubber in my head for the next few days?
What if it moved further inward?
I was not sure, but there was just a slightly uncomfortable sensation about all this.
Was I going to lose my balance?
My hearing?

I could not have dinner before I resolved the issue.
The sewing kit in the bathroom could actually be the answer.
I locked myself in and found the abandoned sewing kit again.
Several colors of thread, two needles, two small white plastic buttons, a small golden safety pin.
There was a solution in here somewhere.

I opened the safety pin and bent it to be more of a straight piece of golden wire with a point. I then inserted the point into one of the little buttons and bent it into shape until I has a golden little tool, a hook custom made to remove rubber objects out of my ear.
I obviously did not want anything sharp to go deep into my ear canal. The bent hook seemed like just the right thing to do.
I decided to not rely on any of the mirrors. They would just confuse me. I would probably end up poking myself in the eye.
So with closed eyes and as gently as I could, I slowly began to look for something that would give the hook just the right amount of resistance.
It was very obvious when the point touched the skin in my ear. It did not really hurt, it just allowed me to somehow create a bit of a mental picture of my ear canal.
After several attempts, the hook gripped something.
I pulled on it gently. A sound as if I were pulling out a shoe out of mud told me that I was indeed pulling something.
Then the hook slipped.
Okay, I had to try again.
I must have attempted to penetrate the rubber with the hook about eleven times. It was a fascinating experience in reality perception really.
There was the resistance, the hook was penetrating the material, there was more resistance, I pulled... the loud noise, the pleasant feeling of a foreign object being removed from the body...
a little more, a little more...
and there is was.
The result of my fishing expedition was in my hand, stuck onto the end of a golden hook. I had managed to bring myself into a dumb situation, but I also managed to get myself out of it somehow.
A pleasant feeling.

When I left the bathroom, there were three flight attendants looking at an instruction manual of sorts. "We are looking for safe instructions how to remove the object from your ear."
I showed them my little contraption.
My friendly flight attendant looked like she really wanted to hug me. I guess we were all relieved, but it would be a bit odd to hug someone because I just managed to pull a piece of rubber out of my ear.
So we did not hug.
She rubbed my shoulder.
I rubbed her shoulder.
We were both very happy this had all happened without any interference of the purser.
And actually before dinner!

For the rest of the flight, all of the flight attendants came by to see me. Some of them just looked at me, most pointed to their left or right ear and either smiled, or had an inquisitive expression on their face. Their lips would move, but they would not utter a sound. "Are you okay?" "How is your ear?"
It was pretty obvious what they were asking. The words were overly expressive.
Yes, I still had my ear.
And I can still hear.
All of my actions might have actually been very dangerous though.
On a tiny scale, of course.
Compared to us riding on two jet engines across the ocean.
But it was a personal story.

The ear incident.

We arrived in Aalborg about 23 hours after leaving the office at 2pm.
The baggage did not make it;
but that's not that special.

As I am writing this, the suitcase was actually delivered by the friendly SAS staff.

And Aalborg is alive tonight.

I will need to finish writing now.
Tomorrow will be a truly fascinating day.

pause...

2009-05-29T23:49:24Z

remember the under construction signs that used to littler the web when it was that empty set of tubes? well, just imagine one here right now... i am working on some things, somehow... hmm... testing testing.
will be right back. but nobody is going to notice it anyway...
nobody visits this place anyway...
; )

okay... i will slowly rebuild...

meanwhile...
pretty loaded, the museum of good looking loaders...

Back in Los Angeles

2009-05-28T04:41:21Z

Back in a hotel I stayed in about 5 years ago. And it is a much better place now. And I am also in a much better room. Well, suite really.
The little plants in the different rooms are very much like the ones I am growing at home, so it feels very much like a little part of me came here to the west coast with me.
A tiny part.
My heart is in Brooklyn, of course.
But the plant here on the desk in the office is smiling at me, somehow telling me not to worry, and that I am going to be back on the east coast in just a few days really.
My reason to stay here five years ago was for a client presentation, and it was a very strange one, in a place just a few blocks from here.
This current trip is much more focussed. We will be shooting. Traveling without moving. We flew west to shoot the far east. It will be interesting.
I am looking forward to it.
And the people joining me here are so excellent. More reasons to be calm.

If only my cold finally went away. Soon I hope. I really hope to not have to land with the pressure in my sinuses. It is a painful affair.

Oh, and we also stopped by an in-n-out burger. A group of men was performing some magic, the gathering mass. The men at the table next to us were discussing the benefits of mario cart. We were there in the largest production car... I guess it was a very fast reminder that we were indeed in Los Angeles.

Hmm... feeling like an actor somehow. I guess I should get ready for tomorrow.
And we continue...

Schloß Hohenkammer for a morning.

2009-03-16T06:13:09Z

Walked around the castle this morning. There is a field in the back, waiting for its yellow color. the trees are currently covered with multiple layers of moss. birds are moving in slowly into the many homes prepared for them. what sounds like a joyful song could potentially be an angry territorial argument.
it is still cold here, but the water around the castle is molten now and school of huge carp wait for their feeding, or maybe for the mosquito larvae which could also make a delicious snack.
my room is like a snail house made out of oak planks and granite. so wonderfully quiet, calm, a very fine filter for concerns. perhaps the very tiny ones make it through. no big ones allowed.
calmness. or slowness, as suggested by the Hamish Fulton piece in the lobby.
there is a small one in my room as well. each room has a special one. there are 65 of them.
also sat down in the old chapel of the castle. a Lawrence Weiner piece reminds about stone plus stone & stone and stone.
stone and wood.
we are just like water around them.
calm now.

going back for a short visit to munich now.

create fleets of thoughts.

2009-02-21T15:29:07Z

fingers crawled into envelopes with bills and other odd unlovely questions. eyes glanced at some labels with alarming names, then flew through the world of interiors. pen crossed a t. dotted an i. i had a cup tea. was in no way upset about things i could be upset about. decided to not get attached to anything bound to pass either way. (nor attached to the way it might.) considered for a few moments if this was day number two or number three of today? and i did not have the answer. (it really depends, see?) some of the tulips out there are braver than others. soon the gentler plants will get to spend some time outside. i now might look at the insides of my lids for a few moments. how many days would God have taken off, had his task have been to create three worlds and pitch one other, to a reluctant audience? that whole 6-1 logic was invented thousands of years before the invention of mass media. humble beginnings. graceful endings. human scale processes. create fleets of thoughts.

oh books.

2009-02-21T01:20:54Z

after the longest four day week, it might be time for a completely uneventful two day weekend. how will this be achieved? Is there such a thing as uneventfulness? (Apparently yes, Apple does not want to change a thing about the word.) I should be sleeping right now. Right now. Now. The world should be nothing more but a distant memory, a dream. The four day week should be a few pages in my planner. traveling objects. traveling. objects. once the dust settles, i will need to have a bit of a conversation with that working version of me. Oh, and it is out. I am one of the judges in the 2009 tournament of books. Oh yes. Books. I will not get started about some conversations I had in a lovely place by a beautiful lake in Bavaria.

Oh, puppy.

2009-01-19T23:34:34Z

The puppy upstairs loves to play in exactly the spot that happens to be above my head. There are apparently no carpets in apartment 11C. And the puppy is not wearing any socks. It sounds as if... no it sounds like a crazy little dog chasing a ball on a much too polished floor. The park looked pretty incredible right around sunrise this morning. And the geese were celebrating their almost successful suicide mission. A gigantic flock was shouting at each other in the middle of the almost frozen lake. On the other side of the hill, the open air kennel had its meeting. Insane dogs and wild owners shouting names and whistling and clapping their hands. Saw several cardinals in trees just inches away from my head. They did not like the camera. I can not blame them. Would i like to have a box the size of my body held up to me awkwardly for an insanely long period of time? Not much is automatic about my camera, and I do not shoot every day. I was dressed warmly enough to make it to Gros Morne. Today I made it to almost the northern edge of prospect park. The bus took me back to the corner here. It is a holiday. I should have been helping the community, not just bumbling around in the snow. The puppy is done with his game of fetch. Is it really not even 7PM?

washing lemon trees with sake vinegar.

2009-01-18T19:34:07Z

burning plum incense now. two sticks. one held by the pewter bunny amy gave me for christmas perhaps two years ago, the other sticking out of a pile of the glazed tiles that came with this particular brand of short sticks. trying to cover the smell of sake vinegar. it was not the right kind of vinegar, i guess. much too fragrant for the job. but i did not want to leave the house to buy vinegar. and maybe vinegar is the wrong thing to use anyway. it does make sense somehow though. a cure i came up with myself, again over a year ago, when the lime tree was starting to die because of some bug infestation. perhaps the dead leaves on the smallest of my lemon trees was just a smart way to avoid the webbing bugs. the smallest one got it. it is in the window though, in the sun. there was not enough room in the sun for the little forest. the little forest is five little trees. all about four years old now maybe? all grown from pits found in lemons bought so i could avoid vinegar in the salad. and the vinegar felt like a cure. and i had to do the work outside. in sweater and jacket, with a pair of scissors. cutting off all the leaves. there were over a hundred, i think. some were very sticky from the liquid they released to get rid of the intruders. i gathered them and added them to the compost bucket. they will be gone around this time next year. after all the leaves were removed, i poured some of the sake vinegar into an old plastic container and with a napkin washed the little trees. they are twigs really, thin lemon tree twigs, and yet pretty mighty looking in their flat wooden container. i removed some of the younger ones completely. two in the back had already died. so yes, it was more than five. there are five larger ones. how had i not noticed earlier that there was a problem? i had not been paying attention to this particular set of trees. they were in the shadow, there were not enough clues for them that summer would return, and so they weakened. i hope that at least some of them manage to return to their senses. now that the little pests are removed, they should. i hope it is not too early into the short winter days. i hope they will make it. the trees look very handsome without their leaves. perhaps the procedure will make them age, just as it would age many other trees with leaves. there is an interdependence between the absence of leaves and winter. i hope it all works out. the smell of the sake vinegar is too strong. so now the fig incense is burning. it is better already. and the eucalyptus leaves i crushed earlier in the day now cover the ground for one of the young blueberry bushes. perhaps so the cold does not appear so severe to the young shrub. though it might be good for it to appear cold... i am not sure. trees are the expression of their surroundings. and surroundings are shaped by their trees. the proper cutting of a tree might look like torture, yet it might actually be good to the plant. there are other factors that matter very much. hmm...

driving home after a sad yet beautiful day

2009-01-12T04:08:57Z

we took the car back to the city with the many men who somehow deposited their stories into the one guy at the wheel. the drive was about 60 minutes, but the stories spanned several lifetimes. there were people jumping off cliffs and buildings, there was french and italian cooking, some of it for hundreds of people. there were children born to many mothers. and there was a good layer of bitterness. and whenever it became too thick, the music would be turned up and any thinking could be blasted away by the smoky voice of rod stewart. the navigation system with the adjusted, seductive voice seemed to not know the way, until it became clear that it had been programmed to get lost. i think we managed to pass through all boroughs. no, we did not get to staten island. the car would go there after dropping us off. i cried when the story of the pear tree was read earlier in the day. we were in a funeral home, staring at an empty container, two boards with lovingly assembled pictures, a priest who explained who can understand the snoring of chickens, as well as a concrete wall, lit, hidden behind many edward durell stone tiles. and i did not know the english words for the prayers, so my lips were just saying them all in german, even though it is not my first language either. i remembered the smell of the priest and the two altar boys who would come to bless our apartment, or my grandmother's apartment. chickens do snore, apparently. and pear trees can not be judged by their look in one season. nothing should be. it was a sad and beautiful day. and many of the stories were probably pulled out of some old smoke.