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[april 2, 2002]it's 9pm, dark outside, the day is almost over and i'm feeling terrible. my head hurts, i'm tired,
fuck
[april 3, 2002]just when cedric had asked me about the bad dreams yesterday night and i answered: 'they have become less frequent' it all starts again. well, no bad dreams, but good dreams, dreams in which the past isn't the past but the present and the future is not there yet but when you wake up you realize that all this is so far away from you know that you will never get to it again and you're losing everything anew. i woke up three or four times tonight and i lost everything all over again each time i realized that it has only been a dream and oh my love is still recall the pleasures that we knew the rivers and the waterfall wherein i bathed with you bewildered by your beauty there i kneeled to dry your feet by such instructions you prepared a man for boogie street it's 7am and i have to catch the train to cologne now
now about the past two days: on eastermonday eve came to visit and we had a great time: it was warm & sunny & we went for a long walk, talking & talking about our parents, the relationship we have to them, and then we ordered pizza and kept talking about books and music and jobs until two in the morning. it really is a pity that she did not get to know thomas and his teachings while he was still in bielefeld. i think she would have loved it.oh crown of light, oh darkened one
i never thought we'd meet
you kiss my lips, and then it's done
and i'm back on boogie street
when i woke up yesterday morning after only a few hours of sleep i had a mail from eve andrée laramée, the new york artist featured on the hollow earth cd-rom. she asked whether there was any news about the project and said that she'll be in cologne in the summer. so cedric & i will probably get to meet her - which i'm very much looking forward to.
i spent the rest of yesterday doing the vocals for the demo recordings, and i guess i sort of got carried away because i added layer after layer of backing vocals. i'll have to see what reiner & daniel's opinion about it will be. in the evening i talked to eve on the phone and we considered going on another walk but then we both thought that we actually were too tired from the night before, so we postponed it until saturday. i then worked a little bit on the data track that is supposed to go onto the demo-cd [with lyrics and info etc.] and then - out of the blue - i suddenly found myself sitting in the movie theater again: i'm sitting in front row, my eyes torn open & i'm unable to shut them & i have to watch old movies, some scenes over & over again until te celluloid is finally melting. where my figure is supposed to be on the screen there's just some blurred, unclear fading shape & where she is there's just a horrible pool of dark light. the faster i'm running away from it the faster it catchs up with me and so i just keep very still and stop moving & hope that it won't find me. but then it's suddenly on my face - bright & flashing - and the film is running over my eyes, my skin because out of panic i accidently hid in front of the screen and dazed & confused i'm staring directly into the colorful, dancing light that is shot at me by me through me and even though it's only light it hurts in my head, in my eyes & i wish i could at least blink and then the only way to cool them is to, ah, you know & while the vision gets blurred an iron insect is crawling across my arm with cold, sharp legs, leaving behind it a thin trail and the soothing sensation of pain you can control. i'm tired. i'm missing you.
and now i'm sitting on the train, the april morning sun is shining through the window and onto my hands and arms and face & i'm cold 'if it were only you | naked on the grass | who would you be then? | this is what she asked | and i said: i wasn't really sure - but i would probably be cold! | and now i'm freezing' i feel like i was 100 years old, my skin is dry and yellow and my eyes are aching. i wish i could fall asleep again and continue where the dreams were torn by the sound of the alarm clock this morning.
[later]it's almost six in the evening now, i've been copying and sorting texts for the seminar with blaine all day long. thomas was in a very good mood - frightening! he's off to paris - don't ask me what he's doing there. the sun is shining into the office and we have turned on all three computers, three monitors, two vcrs, one television set and the printer to heat up the air even more! if you don't hear from me in the next couple of days for god's sake send a rescue squad into the office! i can't get that first line from the first song from the last pj harvey cd out of my head: 'my first name's angelene | prettiest mess you've ever seen'. i don't know what things mean anymore. i can't tell anymore if things mean anything at all. i think i'm slowly getting paranoid.
i'm sipping lukewarm diet coke - bleech - and now i'm joining blaine who will meet his friend downtown.
[later]it's dark completely - but warm still. i'm walking through cologne in the dark, i've spent the evening with blaine and his friend, who is also called cedric. it's so warm still, it's night, the wind a breeze and the smell from the water a promise. all the lights are glistening and really: at the shores of the rhine a big ferris wheel, bright with a thousand colored lights that are dancing in the water. on my md 'true colors': 'i can't remember when i last saw you laughing.' it's so warm, although the sky is completely clear, the stars as bright as the lights from the ferris wheel. the streets are still full of people, walking through the warm air. to say i miss you would be untrue, to say i didn't wouldn't be truer. my mind changes with each turn of the wheel across the river - it's so warm, so mild.
[april 4, 2002]i'm discouraged! i tried all day to find a cheap room in cologne. i need a place to stay the nights from monday to tuesdays and from tuesdays to wednesdays. blast! it is all about 30 euros and higher for one night! which would add up to 240 per month! even a room at the youth hostel is 28 euros! please, if you have an uncle who has a hotel in cologne, please!, tell him i need some special under-paid-academics rate!
it's four now and i will catch the train at five so that i'll be back home at eight. i listened to the final mix of the demo songs the other day on the underground and i think that some of the songs have way too many backing vocals. especially 'moving'. and 'space walk' as well. the vocals are too loud, they don't blend with the music. so i'll have to correct this on friday before the rehearsal. on saturday afternoon cedric will come over and in the evening eve and i are planning to meet. on sunday night i will be at tara & cedric's because we will celebrate cedric's birthday. he's turning 127 on monday. anyway, i've got to catch the train now. see you! by the way: have i mentioned that there's a questionnaire that you can fill out?
[later]i'm on the train back home, reading hornby's 'high fidelity' up to the point where the protagonist decides to screw the girlfriend of a character named 'phil' & how he slowly manages to get her to split up with phil - guess that's a novel blaine will have to discuss on his own. i'm hungry. the sun has gone, there are foggy, high clouds all over the sky. the train is delayed - of course - and we still have 1 1/2 hours to go. i've found an old note from about 2 years ago and back then i wrote:
the lack of voicebehind those clouds the sun looks like the moon - only much sunnier. 'cause that's not the way the world is baby! there was a time when i thought paul simon had written a song called 'rene and georgette agreed with their dog after the war' and i thought this was the most brilliant title i'd ever heard of.
concerns me most these days
as i fail to ask what i
should feel.
the lack of time
comes next.
no voice can make no poem.
last night blaine proposed that it would be fun to do a sort of sitcom just with online journals. like 'friends'. of course i'd rather have it like 'seinfeld'. four or five main characters, each one telling events from her/his point of view, in her/his very own voice with occasional spots of 'objective' dialogues. would be fun. and i think it could *really* work: me, blaine, cedric, tara - we're young, we're funny, we're intelligent and hip and good-looking. well, sort of. but we can write. and we'd have guest stars by anyone who'd like to: paul auster & suzyv & of course paula, it's such a pity that we're not rich. i had more than enough ideas to spend my time without having to work! the pale sun is melting into the clouds like your face into my heart, like a watery, blurred circle of yellow water color on eve's drawing paper, soaking it, creating little waves & it's hard to believe that it is supposedly further away than YOU are now - and i do not mean her - or maybe i do but it doesn't matter because you can walk away, alone, spend all your time thinking about the way things used to be. if love feels all right, you WORK IT OUT, you don't give it up, baby! anybody tell you that! another 45 minutes to go...
[april 6, 2002]eve will visit today and we will spend the evening walking|cooking|talking. rehearsal yesterday went well. there was just one minor problem: daniel didn't turn up. so reiner and i did some songs just with bass and guitar, which sounded better than expected. we
[april 7, 2002]'DIE ENTE WATSCHELTE POPATSCHELTE!!!' eve and i have been watching 'praxis dr. hasenbein' yesterday night before we went on to develop quite an interesting semi-sociological theory of psychological [or psychopathical?] identity formation by different levels of sign systems at half past three in the morning :o)
before that we went to olderdissen [which is a small zoo here where i live] and watched a lot of dead animals lying motionless in the sun. from time to time a zoo keeper sneaked into the enclosures and moved them slightly to create the impression that they were still alive. but they couldn't fool US! it was pretty crowded [and who WOULD have guessed on a sunny saturday afternoon????]. when we came back we cooked some pasta and then watched that helge schneider movie. after that we somehow ended up on the subject of music videos and eve asked whether we ever did one and i told her about that video i did for 'estragon' and i let myself be talked into showing it to her. she said she liked it. she's very polite.
today i will stay at cedric & tara's place because we will celebrate cedric's birthday. besides the obvious and predictable present that he will get i have found something quite strange for him and cedric, if you're reading this: stop here so i can tell what it is. i mean stop right here. now. move on to the next paragraph. don't go on reading. ready? i'm counting to three: one, two...three. you're still reading this!! you're spoiling it for everybody! just skip the next lines. okay? well i can SEE you! you're cheating! okay! that's it! you've done it. i won't write anything about it now! please people, it's not my fault, file your complaints with cedric!
last night bluey posted a message to the list telling about how his mother saw price on tv singing 'when doves cry' but thought he 'looked pretty bad, with long gray hair and singing all deep and not being, you know, little and purple. and then when the song was over they said it was patti smith.' and it made me think of that mail he sent a couple of weeks ago which i just found hilarious:
Subject: dancing to u2now i will start picking up the battlefield that is my kitchen. see you!.
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 03:47:51 -0500
From: "tommy stigmata" <bcapirigi@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: undertow@vega.netthere was a really irritating boy who lived in my dorm last year who was in addition to being noisy and irksome was also just a bad person with dark cinders where his heart ought to have been. he was also on the doctor atkins diet which meant that i had to spend many many meals watching him swish greasy burgers around in plates full of ketchup and mustard and mayonnaise because he thought a bun would make him fat. anyhoo, he had the cleopatra records tribute to u2 (cleopatra records that also made the tributes to madonna and blondie and, oh, everybody else who made an album between 1981 and 1985). anyway, that particular album is pretty boring, as 80s goth tributes tend to be (i never understood what connection morbid black-eyeliner-wearing teenagers have with dead can dance. and there's a club here called club hell that's supposed to be all goth, and in their new commercials they're playing i eat cannibal in the background, for heaven's sake.) anyway, it is kinda danceable, though, the u2 tribute album. i just thought i'd mention that since people were talking about u2, and dancing.
oh wait, i almost didn't finish my story. so yeah, this irritating boy, who came from rochester new york and rambled on and on all the time about the chain of luxury supermarkets they have there (although, admittedly, everyone i've ever met from rochester, and certain people who've just passed through, have rambled on and on about these supermarkets, which sound a little too bourgeois for me.) well, he had the u2 tribute, and he gave it to me, and then he irritated me to no end and so i avoided him for the next five months and never gave him the cd back. but now i'm feeling sort of guilty about it and i think i might send it back to him. although he's probably bought a new one by now. or just downloaded it off his computer, because he was irritating like that.
oh, and this cd, the u2 tribute, has new year's day covered by frontline assembly, but with tiffany singing it, which made it extra industrial and extra 80's, i guess. but i'd just like to take this opportunity to mention that i'm very disappointed in the fact that tiffany is on the cover of the new playboy, especially because in 1987 i wanted to marry her. her or belinda carlisle, who was on the cover of playboy last year. i'm hoping this isn't a trend, where all the girls i've wanted to marry end up on the cover of playboy. if my old friend leah from down the street ends up in playboy, i'll cry.
oh. ok, i'm rambling, but it's almost 4 in the morning and i'm all wired right now because this afternoon a migraine came along and kicked me in the behind (and the head), and so i slept all afternoon and so now i'm not tired in the least. i just wanted to say, while we're on the subject of shady tribute albums, i went to newport yesterday to buy some white pants. i'd seen some in the h&m in boston last weekend but there were crazy lines to get in the dressing room and h&m pants always make my butt look big anyway, so i didn't bother. what i didn't realize though was that newport all but shuts down for february and the first half of march and doesn't open up again until saint patrick's day, and so there were no white pants to be had. i did buy some black pants, though, at the army navy store, which are quite nice. warm. and i went to the cd store that's there, and i was looking for things to buy and i kinda wanted a bunch of things, but i ended up buying the album of air remixes, because it was on sale and because i had been talking about it the night before. and i bought a spanish-language tribute to the cure, for no reason whatsoever, and i was sure it'd be terrible and cheesy but i thought it might be funny, and plus it wasn't seventeen dollars.and it's really really good. like, fabulous, even. well, maybe not. whoever sings lovesong doesn't meet my standards of how lovesong should sound, but just like heaven is great, and so is m, and so is if only tonight we could sleep. so if anybody ever sees an album called 'por que no puedo ser tu: un tributo a the cure,' get it. it's really worth it.
bluey
song of the day: 10:15 sabado a la noche, maria fatal
[april 9, 2002]great songs to listen to on repeat: paul simon - 'the rhythm of the saints'. christ, what a rotten day! be prepared for a long, long list of complaints! first of all: i had a great time at cedric & tara's
place.
i ate too much, though. especially yesterday. too much cake. too much sweets.
like i had to make up for all the weeks that i did not eat any chocolate
at all. i arrived on sunday evening with tara who was in bielefeld and
gave me a lift to herford. later oliver (not that one but an old friend
of cedric) joined us and at midnight we had some champagne and cedric unwrapped
his presents. in slow motion. as usual. he got a couple of books (balzac,
thomas mann) and a cd with a recording of a lecture by karl heinz bohrer:
ekstasen der zeit. ecstasy of time. i got him the new nerve bible demo
cd, the new sheryl crow cd and a strange but probably pretty interesting
pc adventure game called the hollow earth. we stayed up until four in the
morning and everybody could make a list with ten songs that cedric played
then. the next morning we slept until noon, had breakfast and then cedric's
father and his new wife come over for tea. his father is quite nice but
margaret is really a pain in the ass. she's dumb as a piece of sandwich
but even worse she is hurting everybody. i always have a great time meeting
her knowing that she is not a relative of mine and that i can just lean
back and enjoy the freak show. but poor cedric will have to deal with her
until
she dies. which might be soon if the circumstances are favorable for humanity.
'the kind people have a wonderful dream.' in the evening marc, another
friend of cedric came over and we had raclette. before we went shopping
for dinner and this was quite an original cedric-mission: we entered the
shop three minutes before they were closing. on sunday cedric gave me that
arno schmidt short novel: lake scenery with pocahontas and also
a recording of it by jp reemtsma which i listened to when i was doing the
washing up monday morning. it was quite inspiring. not for the essay that
i'm supposed to write for that volume that cedric is editing about 'lake
scenery' - but i felt the need to write, to frame, to put what i thought
and saw into words. i started to write down a couple of sentences:
the air is fresh as water, waving through the open frensh window with the sun and the far away sounds from the street. it's noon - a perfect spring noon. this (short) night was filled with more strange dreams: of her of course but also of thomas: he was organizing a conference and the three of us (tara, cedric & i) wanted to help him but we overslept. i woke up in a panic and with the urge to do SOMEthing to ease my bad conscience: work or write my dissertation. after i had realized that i was only a dream i heard cedric's phone ring. and the answering machine started and i heard thomas saying: 'hello! is anybody home?' frightening. on the audio: nick drake, on the table: the breakfast, on the shelf: 99.9F° with black pen in suzanne's handwriting: 'to tara'. this morning while i was doing the washing up i was listening to arno schmidt: lake scenery with pocahontas. drops of color in my vision. no verbs.when i came back home yesterday night i found a letter in my mailbox. it was from eve. it was serious. it said that i had hurt her on saturday night when we talked about the different levels of communication we have. she had asked me about it and whether it wouldn't confuse me as well to have that email exchange on the one hand and the 'realtime' interaction on the other, when both were sort of different. and i had answered then that i thought that there were different 'eves' in different situations for me, one being the 'eve' that i am mailing to, a sort of fictional plane of projection. i think i was far too cool and abstract with my answer. i think it was way too rational, too 'heartless'. because i was afraid, i think, because i'm insecure after all what has happened. i wrote back to her last night at three in the morning and sent her another mail today. [great song openings #1: suzanne vega: widow's walk - 'consider me a widow, boys!']
nina, the woman i wanted to rent the cheap room from in cologne, did not call back. i tried to contact her today again, but no answer :-((( when i was standing in the shower this morning - hair full of shampoo and the rest of my rather unsightly body covered with soap - suddenly (and in an act of simultaneous denial) all the drains blocked. it was like in a movie: i was standing there, freezing, the soap running into my eyes and i could do nothing but step out of the shower and wait for somebody to fix the mess. which is done this very minute. so when i knocked at the door of the neighbors upstairs to tell them not to turn on the water or flush the toilet a woman answered the door and before i could say a single word she started to excuse for her three year old grandson who is visiting her. he is running around until three in the morning(!) playing and shouting and jumping up and down so that sleeping is only possible when i plug my ears. he usually gets up again at noon and continues running and jumping and from time to time i think he will crash through the ceiling. the tenant who had my flat before had told me about the kid and said that he is visiting his grandma above me from time to time. but when i talked to the woman this morning she said that he was hyperactive and 'i don't know what to do with him - and i don't get a different flat' and then i slowly realized that he is NOT visiting but that he is living there permanently and that she is NOT his grandmother but his mother and that he will be jumping and kicking and screaming from noon to three in the morning every night. i felt a slight fit of nausea and tumbled downstairs again to open my mail and get a notice from the power supply about a monthly payment of 80 euros that i'll have to make. [great song openings #2: david byrne - independence day 'now and then i get horny...']
laterdear diary,
[april 10, 2002]on the way to cologne: i had thought, i had hoped that anything new would replace the old, would lessen it, would make it disappear. but it doesn't. it just seems to make it even stronger. i'm hanging on to it like it could save me from the senselessness that surrounds me like cold water. i want to bind my knees to my chin and my arms to my waist. where ARE you and why are you not here? are YOU warm? are YOU save? aren't YOU missing me at all? all the words i do not have for you come back upon me like hard, sharp rain, this is not like i thought it would be. i wish i was old, i wish i had come to an end, i wish i had leonard's voice or the choice to stitch my lids and lips together. where are you? i'm soaked with hurting: my skin and my bones and my head and my head and the various hearts that i've used up for you, that i've worn out in the struggle to wrestle you down. you and all you meant for me. me and all i did not mean for you.
lateri'm at the station, waiting for the train back home. i'm happy to be able to drive back today but i would be even happier if i had news from the woman who rents that room that i need!
the platform is crowded and loud and bathed in the slant of the late afternoon. next to me there's a woman - mid 40s - and it seems like i know her from somewhere. but whenever i glance over to examine her face closer she turns her head. now she's lighting a cigarette and the wind whirls the smoke into my face in little, soft spirals. something drops down softly close to my right ear like shiny glass pearls of a cold rosary. now the woman is talking into her cellular phone, i can't really understand what she's saying, it's too noisy and loud and from over here it looks like she would just move her lips without saying a word at all while she is looking at the fake marble floor with a long, cool stare - i wish i'd remember where we've met! i don't think that she's working at cologne university. anyway it seems like she is also waiting for the train to bielefeld so perhaps i know her from there. paula wrote a week ago and promised to send more recordings of her poems. i realized that i haven't written anything in a long, long time - only the journal, but not a coherent, good piece of writing. no song either. no dissertation. today thomas asked 'how is life?' and if i hadn't been in a hurry to catch the train i would have closed his office doors and talked to him about my fucked up life.
the evening sun is shining brightly onto the left side of my face, turning every grain of dust on my glasses into big polygonous specks of light, a bright stain that irritates my vision and underlines that glass border between me and the world. i'm on the train now and that woman i seem to know has a seat a couple of rows in front of me across the aisle. i can only see the back of her head: brown hair down to her shoulders, dark cardigan, delicate neck. she's not reading, just sitting there by the window examining the landscape. i think we do have the same way. and guess what has happened now? the batteries of my md player are empty! three hours before bielefeld! what a nightmare!
everything outside has turned into a light green: small, fresh leaves, blooming bushes. we're stopping in the middle of nowhere for the third time - and of course we're delayed already. it's getting dark slowly, almost hesitantly as the sky fills with gray clouds and the light turns pale. the other day cedric remarked that the entries would get more and more impressionistic. perhaps he's right. i leave it up to you to interpret what this means. lonely farms & vast, vast fields guarded by crows. today i had to tape two scenes from 'magnolia' for thomas: the one where all the characters suddenly and quite unexpectedly start to sing along to that aimee mann song and the scene in which it suddenly and quite unexpectedly as well starts raining frogs. and i had to think of eve because she gave me the soundtrack when we got to know each other and so i sent her a short mail this afternoon and she wrote back saying that she misses me.
the battery has slightly recovered so the music is back again now that we are arriving in bielefeld. paula's 'ramblings on days of open hand' is on and just as i mumble 'find me, please oh find me' the woman i seem to know gets up and i suddenly remember each time we've met and she turns to me with her hand extended her palm is split with a flower with a flame.
[april 11, 2002]
[april 13, 2002]spent the day with eve. we went to the flea market and i've found a great book: 'the secret teachings of all ages - an encyclopedic outline of masonic, hermetic, qabbalistic and rosicurian symbolic philosophy'. it's night now. i'm tired and my eyes are hurting. on monday i'll have to go to cologne and find a room. our seminar will start as well. i'm not feeling prepared. i'm not feeling prepared for another semester, for another month. for another week. i'm really, really tired. right now i'm listening to that joni mitchell cd that eve gave me, the one that has 'a case of you' on it arranged for an entire orchestra. it is so overwhelmingly graceful and i wish my life had only a fraction of it. the candles are burning down one after the other and in a couple of minutes the only light left will be the blue light from the monitor and the occasional stripes of light that wander through my room when a car passes by. i'm tired. i wish i could have spent the whole evening with eve, but she's meeting some friends tonight. i don't know if you're still reading this. or whether you ever did. i wrote to angelina. she never wrote back. i don't understand. i don't want to spend this night alone. find me, please, oh find me. the other day i recalled all the fun that xxxx and i had back then, the games we played in our old apartment: when i came back home from cologne she would stay at her parents and i had to find out which things did not belong into our flat: his coke in the fridge, his books in the living room, his styling gel in the bathroom, the cassette he recorded for her in the stereo, his hair on the soap in the shower. i go missing in my own life. great song openings #3: joni mitchell - a case of you:
just before our love got lost you saidwoee! what a great start into the week! i was with xxxx the other night because she had problems with her pc so we tried to get it fixed. but for some unknown & irrelevant reason to do so we had to go to her parents' house. her parents were on holidays though so we were alone in that big house. and then suddenly i realized that xxxx kept packing things into her backpack, cds & stuff & she said: "you know, i have over 20 cds of cheryl crow" and when she spoke those words i knew that she was packing all these things to take them back to where she was living with HIM now and that she would leave again on thursday and i was kneeling in front of the bed and was looking up to her and she was dressed all in black and was looking down on me and i wanted to say please. don't go. please. stay with me but i started to breathe shortly and heavily, i was gasping for breath in short, sharp cramps and that was when i woke up from getting no air and when i was looking at the
"i am as constant as a northern star"
and i said, "constant in the darkness
where's that at? if you want me i'll be in the bar"on the back of a cartoon coaster
in the blue tv screen light
i drew a map of Iowa, oh Iowa
and i wrote your name on it twiceoh you are in my blood like holy wine
you taste so bitter but you taste so sweet
i could drink a case of you darling
still i'd be on my feeti am a lonely loser, i live with a bunch of saints
i'm frightened by the devil
and I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid
i remember that time that you told me, you said
"love is touching souls"
surely you touched mine
cause PART OF YOU POURS OUT OF ME
IN THESE LINES FROM TIME TO TIMEoh you are in my blood like holy wine
you taste so bitter but you taste so sweet
i could drink a case of you darling
still i'd be on my feeti met a woman, she had a mouth like yours
she knew your life, she knew your devils and your deeds
and she said
"go to her, stay with her if you can
but be prepared to bleed"oh you are in my blood like holy wine
you taste so bitter but you taste so sweet
i could drink a case of you darling
still i'd be on my feet
i'd still be on my feet[april 15, 2002]
[later]it's half past seven at night. i'm alone in the office, everybody has left already. today the seminar i'm doing with blaine started, and it went quite well for the first session. we have 83 participants, which is quite a contrast to the three students i had last semester. we will have to do the blueprints for chaos/control:complexity all over again. the images are too dark so i have to alter all the screenshots and replace the ones that are in the old word version. *SIGH* this will be another week of nervewracking 'frizzlearbeit'.
i still have no room in cologne, still don't know where i will stay two weeks from now. i'm too tired to care. i haven't eaten anything proper today: only junk food. feel bad. tired. tomorrow will be the colloquium, where everybody working on her|his phd thesis will come and discuss texts on an 'advanced' level - far too advanced for me. i cannot think anymore. i haven't prepared the text. didn't know when. i'm no thinker. i'm no academic. i can't even speak|write proper english. my shoulders hurt. the landlord of the small flat i'm living in here in cologne wants me to renovate the apartment when i'm moving out in two weeks. i haven't even been in the flat most of the time! i don't care. i'm tired. i want a home. paula wrote. i have to write back. not tonight. it's raining. it's getting dark. it's getting cold, too. i want a home. i want some rest. from you and everything else. i want that things just fall into order. but i know that this will break them. or me. and if he isn't...
[april 16, 2002]i'm feeling cut off. the batteries of my cellular phone are almost empty because i've been talking to cedric for almost an hour yesterday night. the server is down again. i can't get any mail, i can't send any mail. i'm at my apartment anyway. it's like i'm in the middle of nowhere, being unable to communicate with anybody. all the questions shout at me so loud again tonight as i watch the rain explode in heavy drops onto the wooden boards of the balcony. it's almost dark. it 's cold. i'm feeling dirty, my skin is greasy. i could need a shave. the words don't come easily and i'm confused about a lot of things: old confusions and new confusions and old longings and new desires. i'm hungry and thirsty but i don't have anything here: the fridge is empty. i still have no place to stay in cologne. the birds are singing and although it has been raining all day long you can tell from the green trees and the blooming bushes and the freshly cut lawns that it's spring.
[april 17, 2002]another wednesday morning. it hasn't stopped raining all night long. i slept with the window open because the sound of the rain dropping down soothed me. but fortunately the mail server is working again. eve wrote, sending me a couple of lines from beautiful losers which she is reading:
a saint does not dissolve the chaos [...] something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance[later]
[april 18. 2002]from a mail i wrote to paula the other night:
dear paula,it's thursday morning. i will stay in cologne until the staff meeting is over. applying for the room yesterday night was a disaster :o( maybe i just have to drive back to bielefeld every night and return the next morning.i hope you are fine. thanks so much for your mails and for writing that you've been reading in the online journal. i'm in cologne, it's the end of a very busy wednesday and i still haven't found a new flat or a room. i've just been visiting a 'wg' (a wohngemeinschaft where you share your apartment with one or more flat mates - you've got your own room but use kitchen and bathroom together) but when i told them that i won't be really 'living' there, that i was only looking for a place to spend the night they told me right away that they were skeptical. it was strange. we were standing there in the kitchen, four people who all had applied for that one room, trying to be competitive, trying to be chosen, trying to outdo the others in being ourselves. it was ridiculous. i didn't even want that room anymore then because i felt so stupid standing there in a line, being judged.
natalie merchant is singing about some frozen charlotte and i remember how xxxx and i had once taped that song, i think it was for uwe's birthday. far away ill be gone will you wait for me here how long i don't know but wait for me here follow don't follow me to where i will go i don't know how to mange my life anymore, paula, i don't know. i'm missing the feeling of having a home. i'm missing the feeling of being held, of knowing that there's a place where i'm safe. i don't even write anymore. i long so much for being able to write again. it's like the words, the poetry had been sucked out of my life. the only thing i can do is listen to your beautiful words in wonder and amazement and wish that i could write as well.
and then there's been the angelina incident which is quite mysterious and troubles me and keeps me thinking and thinking about it. it's a long story and i can't tell all about it here except that i keep wondering whether i'm getting paranoid, whether i'm mixing up the facts and the fiction and which parts of my life are real. are you real? i don't know. i only have your voice and your teddy and your t-shirt. you are words to me, you don't smell, you don't look, you are nonmaterial. and still your nonmateriality affects me bodily. your voice doesn't have an origin and still it makes me shiver, it makes me grasp for air, it reaches for my heart with a firm grip, it nests inside my lung and makes breathing difficult. sorry, i'm rambling but today hanjo and i had a discussion about 'bodies that matter' and 'matter that bodies' and he kept talking about bodily intensities that are beyond (or before) representation and i just couldn't agree.
am i real at all? is my pain real? are my tears real? are my wounds real? actually they are not: they are nonmaterial as well, they are only what is not: a rupture in the structure, a disconnection of skin and nerves and parts of the hearts. the intensities of some moments frighten me because they leave me nothing to do but tremble and cramp every muscle in my body until it can't hold the tension anymore and erupts into tears or wounds or in the best cases: words. and it wears me out, it wears me out. but i seem to have to learn to live with it.
i'm tired, paula. there's so much to do. there are so many broken things to sweep up, so many pieces to glue together again, it's so much work to clean the mess inside and around me. i don't know where to begin. i don't want to begin. i just want to lie down right on the spot and just let come what may come, as long as i don't have to do anything anymore. i don't want to fight or to feel or to strain or to try or to search or to hurt or to think or to dream anymore. period. i want an end to desire. the past couple of days i took two showers a day as if i could wash desire from my body and down the drain. there are days when i go outside and keep walking for two hours, as if i could leave desire behind by walking away from it. and i'm doing this although i know that the more i'm repressing it the more it will come back to haunt me in unexpected ways and moments.
[much later]i'm back home and i've just seen that new pulp video that cedric has told me about the other week: great! actually i wanted to work the rest of the evening when i came home at six today, but i just couldn't concentrate. after four days of advanced cologning i was totally worn out. unfortunately the weather is rather bad, otherwise i had been going for a walk. when i left cologne a thunderstorm was raging and when i arrived in bielefeld a thunderstorm was raging here as well.
[april, 19, 2002]rehearsal is canceled because daniel is moving this weekend :o( tough luck, just when the wish to sing makes me almost explode. what's even worse: i don't have any guitar because it's being repaired right now. so the only thing i can do is turn up the stereo and sing along to cds. [great songs to listen to on repeat for 20,000 times: joni mitchell: 'hejira'] it's night now and i haven't done all i wanted to do today, but i went for another walk, which was good. although i realized - when i was walking through the park with it's freshly cut lawn and all the new spring flowers shining brightly in red and yellow and blue and the children playing soccer and the newly wed couple posing for the photograph at the pond - that i am not a single step away from where i was christmas. i haven't left you yet.
tomorrow eve and i will meet, i'm looking forward to that. yesterday night i talked to cedric on the phone and for some reason we ended up talking about annoying habits that we have and i told him that i realized that i'm saying 'sort of' every other sentence when i'm speaking english and he said that mark told him that he's constantly saying 'och gottchen' when he's talking to him on the phone. and we went on to discuss strange people that we know so i told him that blaine hates umbrellas. he just can't stand them. when we're going to the cafeteria and it's raining he rather gets soaking wet than to come under my umbrella.
song of the day: kristin hersh - 'me and my charms' You can come back when you want to | just know that I'll be here | I haven't left this step | and when the lights go out | I pick the angel up | I only have two hands... | Is she here? is she here right now? | drive her off; don't bother to call | I'm checking out today... | Me and My charms | When I kiss the angel I have a taste of you | When I take the angel I have a piece of you | I have a piece | You can come back | I haven't left you yet | and when the lights go out | I pick the angel up | I only have two left feet | All I have in my hands, me and my charms | When I kiss the angel I have a taste of me and my charms | me and my charms down on the ground | You can't leave me now | I haven't left you yet
well, i still wanted to tell you about that angelina episode: a couple of months ago somebody filled out the questionnaire and she named herself 'angelina'. [see here] some days later she filled it out again, this time writing to me the following
this is angelina again. lately i filled out your questionaire. i answered your question "what would you have me do"? i answered "e-mail" me. i wasn't quite sure whether i was serious about it, so i did not give out my e-mail address. here it is: angelene@XXXXX.de. i follow your diary for a very long time now. think i'd like to get to know you better. just virtual. don't fear anything. in case you find the time, just send me anything. i love your writing. your words embrace. there's nothing else i can say. since there is not much in my life that lightens up my day, i hope for some virtual enlightenment. only if you find the time. just if you feel like it. just send me anything. i accept whatever you will be sending. thanx. angelinaso i wrote a short mail back saying that i couldn't really provide any kind of enlightenment but that she is welcomed to write to me whenever she feels like it. and then she sent me the following mail:
Subject: wordesirewhen i had read this i was stunned. because the wording reminded me so much of the way that xxxx used to write. and suddenly i kept asking myself whether the name 'angelina' had any kind of significance. because if you rearranged parts of the latter you get xxxx's name. the feedback form does not give me any mail address, but it does give me a guess from which server it was sent and angelina's answers have presumably been sent from a server in bielefeld. xxxx loves pj harvey. "angelene" (angelina's mail alias) is the title of the first song on the last album from pj harvey: "is this desire?". xxxx also loves radiohead. there are two radiohead quotations in angelina's mail. the last mails that xxxx & i have exchanged ended with quotes by laurie anderson - angelina seems to be a big laurie anderson fan. her subject line "wordesire" could not only allude to harvey's cd but is also exactly that kind of pun that xxxx would have made. xxxx has made her exams on 'entropy' - angelina writes about "this wicked entropy". and entropy is not a word that's usually part of your vocabulary when you're learning english. xxxx loves the german writer unica zürn who wrote a story in which the protagonist kills herself by jumping out of a window. when i moved out of our flat i left a cd for xxxx on which 'one white whale' plays a central part and in one of my last letters to xxxx i wrote: "I've just, by accident, heard Laurie Anderson's "One White Whale" and I instantly recognized the lines that paula has quoted in one of her past mails: "How to find you? Maybe by your singing" and the song pierced my soul and I remembered how we went to see Laurie Anderson and the concert was canceled and I realized that you are my white whale, my object of desire, of hate and so much more of love and I realized that I DON'T WANT TO DROWN CHASING YOU BUT I DO I DO I DO." and angelina closes her mail with the same reference to anderson|melville|freud.
Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2002 21:23:28 +0200
From: angelene@XXXX.dedear philipp,
>thanks a lot for you interest in the online journal and for you very,
>very kind words. i wish i could answer to them appropriately.there is no need for appropriate answers. i am sure you will be doing more than appropriate. all i wished for was an exchange of words and thoughts with you. since long i follow your online-diary and read through the nerve bible homepage. rarely have i found a wordflow so exquisitely touching and deeply moving like yours. sometimes it was a bit creepy because it felt like opening a door to my own mind in which words unspoken piled up since years. a kind of a thought to be private and hidden "brain store-house", but in fact administered by a foreign store-keeper. to be honest, i wanted some extra-attention from you, something more, than others might get by reading through your diary that goes out to everyone who wants to read it. of course i know you have friends and they know you much more personally than i ever will, but then - in case we start an exchange of mails - they will never know you the way that i know you. that makes it special as well: "you'd kill yourself for recognition" - embarrassing somehow, but that's how it is. i hope not to frighten you - let me try to put it a little different: i was looking for a safe and clean place to gather and exchange words of beauty and passion. that's all i long for. i am feeling so worn out, my lips are so dry, my arms so weak, my skin hurts - but my heart is still pulsating. i want a place to keep it alive, a place where i can be beautiful and strong, wild and luxurious, adorable and mysterious. be sure never to meet me.
> when you filled out the questionnaire you answered the question 'which
> song do you want to have played at your funeral?' with 'i want a poem by
> anne sexton to be read'. now i don't know a whole lot of sexton, and i
> was wondering whether there's a specific poem you had in mind?yes, i would have "her kind" to be read. it gives the perfect image of a woman who tries desperate but in vain to rearrange or restore a kind of order that - i think - refers to herSELF in a way since she - or better her body loses its shape, becomes distorted/destroyed. her bones are crushed (like a bug on the ground) and her flesh is burnt. not only her body, but also her mind is out of shape, she's a possessed witch, twelve fingered, a woman who's not a woman. she's out of place and that's why she keeps sorting and sorting and sorting things. and like an illness this wicked entropy crawls into and upon her. and this is how i feel, finally, my own body being out of shape, being a woman that is not a woman anymore. sometimes i try to make time run backwards so as to jump backwards into the window and uncrush the lower half of my body, uncrush my mind that drove me doing this mad thing. but, as in the poem, the wheel can't be stopped - it just goes on and on and on.
>i have always loved peter gabriel's song 'mercy street', even when i was too
>young to understand the lyrics or to know whom it was about.yes, i love that song, too. the first time i heard it i found it divine. it's got some elements in it that make it sound like a piece of the nineties. it could have just come out.
>last year i found a reading of sexton's 'all my pretty ones' which impressed me very
>much. it fitted the lyrics of gabriel's song so perfectly,
>so i mixed both (reading and singing) together, and it sounds quite good.i can imagine that, since i know some of her readings. her voice is so silent, soft and strong, she could cut steel with it. apart from that i would like to listen to your composition. what cedric wrote about your "hands of raining water" gave me goosepimples. sounds promising and i would really love to listen to your music. it must be magic. do you think you will be playing the gabriel-sexton-piece on one of the gigs you are planning to give in the end of the year?
>so all i can do is offer you to write to me
>whenever you feel like it, even though my answers might not always be
>really uplifting.as i wrote above i don't expect you to cheer me up by telling jokes or funny stories. what makes me "see the light" is the way you are using language and letting your mind float. just send me word, write me mails. that's all i ask of you.
>by the way, i realized that you have a '.de' email address so i wondered
>whether you were german?yes, i am german. but since everyone approaches you in english i thought i would do that as well.
or would you better have me write in german?angelina
"one white whale in all these oceans" - my dumb object of desire
now all this could just be cruel coincidences, and maybe i'm just paranoid but i started asking myself whether this is xxxx who is writing to me, trying to establish some sort of mail contact. i mean this is what she wanted to do right from the point when we split: stay in contact, be friends, exchange words. but i wouldn't want to do this, for obvious reasons.
of course you can easily find arguments against this, and i tried to convince myself that xxxx does not know so much about anne sexton as to write as eloquently about a poem of her, that she would not mistake the sexton/gabriel mix i made for a cover song as angelina did and finally that xxxx has no reason to write to me because she is living happily with oliver now.
so i wrote a careful mail back to angelina, not giving away my suspicion but only asking her whether she knew that pj harvey cd and how she came upon the concept of entropy.
she didn't answer.
and this just made me all the more suspicious. and it really, really troubled me. what did it mean? what if it is not xxxx but really somebody who is desperate and suicidal? i was worried. i didn't know what the silence meant. and all this made me think about xxxx more than ever. it started an avalanche of thoughts and emotions again. i couldn't stop thinking about it so i wrote to her yesterday and i asked her who she was. and today i got an answer:
Subject: Re: And I said: OK. Who is this really? - it\'s neither angelina nor xxxxso the whole episode just proves that i am slowly losing my mind completely and that i'm getting really, really paranoid! it scared me a little that i overacted so much. but even cedric said that he would be the last one to be surprised if angelina turned out to be actually xxxx. i mean it's just mad! and it showed me how desperate i am for any sign, for any sparkle of hope, for anything that might bring back a past that has never existed. i think all this holding on to is actually a denial of the past. i am remembering a past that has never existed. i am melancholic for a past in which i was happy. but just WHEN should this have been?
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 00:39:42 +0200
From: angelene@XXXX.dedear philipp,
i am so sorry about worrying you. i did not reply for so long because i was afraid to hurt you again writing the way i do. i feared what you already said in your mail: that i remind you of your girlfriend. i am not xxxx. if you wish me to stop writing to you then i will. i can understand you and i am sorry for making your heart ache. i did not expect that. please tell me if you wish me to stop writing to you.
sorry
angelina
i'm waiting each day that hollywood makes an offer for the movie rights for my life. small joys of life#1: looking forward to putting on my favorite pajama that came out of the laundry today.
[april 20, 2002]i was just in town to buy a new alarm clock so i won't oversleep again on monday. i've bought a really ugly one but its ringing will wake the dead. actually it was pretty risqué to go shopping on a saturday morning because, well, you know, you might meet people who have to work during the week and whose favorite shopping time is saturday morning. but i thought before of the shortest and the most secure way to go so i got in, finished the operation and got out. 'like a navy seal' vicky smith would say. or also 'a man's got to do what a man's got to do.' in the staff meeting she told how she was at some office and the woman behind the desk said: 'sorry mrs smith, but the law is the law' which of course is a logic you can't really argue against so she just thought 'yeah and you're an arse'.
right now i'm preparing the drama part for the seminar on monday. i already have a rough outline of the structure of the sessions, so this is good. but i will still have to prepare a couple of copies and overhead transparencies on monday so i'll probably have to take the train at 6 in the morning. sigh.
[later]it's half past five already and i haven't even gotten to do any textwork! i've just summarized facts and facts and what i thought would be facts about the genres novel & drama. boy, it's taking much longer than i had hoped. anyway, i'm going to see eve now. i'll have to finish things tomorrow, then. sigh again.
[april 21, 2002]uncanny song of the day and also great song to listen to on repeat: element of crime - 'just like you': a scarecrow is standing in front of your house in a strawberry field and is booed at by twenty sparrows. twenty sparrows are as much as a small child. for mothers small children are good, just like you. just like you is everything this world has to offer and twenty sparrows are loved by their mothers very dearly which is good just like you. a pitt bull is standing in front of your house in a strawberry field and is booed at by twenty cats. twenty cats are as much as a small cow for butchers small cows are good. just like you just like you is everything this world has to offer and pitt bulls are loved by their mothers very dearly which is good just like you. a crossword puzzle is standing in front of your house in a strawberry field and is booed at by twenty words just like you. twenty words are as much as a warm wind for flowers warm winds are good just like you. just like you is everything this world has to offer and strawberry fields are loved by their mothers very dearly which is good just like you.
spend a nice evening with eve again which went longer than i had planned. i was in bed at three and considering that i will have to get up tomorrow at four something i suppose this wasn't the best way to prepare my inner clock for an early time to rise. anyway, we discussed beautiful losers, which was very inspiring. now i will hopefully finish the preparations for the course tomorrow. i also want to finish that mail to angelina that i've started the other day plus daniel wanted to call and tell me when and where i can help him moving today. so the days are just packed.
i've just fallen into a movie: while element of crime is singing i am looking out of my window on the ground floor and across the street there are cars parked on the pavement and the sun is shining brightly against the walls of the old houses the doors of which are opened widely. the street is empty and a child is playing with a ball, kicking it against the side of the house again and again. the world seems to be so small, so slow, so secure, so comprehensible. like the setting in a late helge schneider film. all morning i've got a strange taste in my mouth. no, not quite a taste, a feeling rather. or non feeling. like my tongue was getting numb. for butchers small cows are good. just like you. i have nothing to say and i cannot find the words for it.
[later]the weather is fairly nice. it's sunny and warm and i've just been walking through the woods again. scratched my arm on a radiohead song. daniel didn't call. i'm hungry. uh, by the way, i've finally sent a photo of me to paula. she said that she was disappointed that she couldn't see my face on the photostrip i sent last month so i attached that one photo of me that i like, the black and white one made when we were on holidays in denmark. she hasn't asnwered since ;o) suzyv wrote to the list the other minute: "Also my idea of "socially relevant" may not be everybody's idea of socially relevant, so I would hold off on the congratulations if I were you until the songs are finished!! Now that I've said it's under way I better get cracking!" ha! what a woman!! just like you.
[april 22, 2002]the early bird...walking to the subway station at 5:30 i'm only accompanied by the singing of the birds. it's slowly getting lighter. the streets are quiet, though. when i turn around the corner i see that the builders have finished restoring the belfry where we used to live. its copper top is glistening in a sun that hasn't reached the ground yet. a cat is running across the street silently. suddenly all the birds are stopping and i can see her clearly: her soft and unguarded face, sleeping peacefully and dreamlessly only a hundred feet away and when the camera pulls back i can see her lying curled up in his arms like a little girl. i should be happy. why am i not happy?
[later]boy, what a morning: ten minutes from bielefeld the train broke down. i arrived an hour late in cologne. i had hardly time to do the last preparations for the seminar. then the printer broke down. the course was hell: we have 97 students now. if everybody writes a paper of about ten pages blaine and i will have a thousand pages of term papers to correct. i'm not quite sure how to manage that. the weather is warm but cloudy. i wish i could lie on my back now on a blanket on a lawn that is freshly cut and when you lean over to kiss me your long hair tickles my cheeks and your face takes the place of the sun and it is so much brighter and so much warmer and so much further away. i'm tired. i'm aching for you. in everything i do.
[later]it's 8:30 on a perfect summer night. almost perfect because you - yes YOU - are nowhere in sight. or in reach, which is so much worse, so much worth. all i have in my hands me and my charms - it's light, it's warm, it's sunny and the birds are singing. on the way from the subway to my apartment here in cologne - which i will move out of on saturday - a little girl was standing under a huge cherry tree that was full in bloom, the branches burning in a fiery, fierce red and she took one branch that hung down low and she shook it and a million glowing blossoms sailed to the ground softly and the girl kept dancing and spinning amidst this raging rain of rubies. it was so beautiful that i had to think of you. i'd been as happy as this girl i'd been as graceful and as beautiful your love had been blooming blossoms endlessly falling round me in a warm shower of leaves and now ME AND MY CHARMS I HAVE A TASTE OF YOU YOU CAN'T LEAVE ME NOW LEAVE ME NOW LEAFE ME NOW LEAVE ME NOW. god i will never stop writing to you and to everybody else i need you i need you i need you now now now. hysterical and useless what can i tell you i have said EVERYTHING already. there's nothing now, nothing to change, to choose or to improve. just a lack and an enormous empty space inside of me where you once were, a space so wide inside, a topological wonder: an empty universe twice as large as the whole world and twice as dark and cold. but you know, you know where you are with i've had to travel through it a million times in circles and in lines in pain in my ears and ended up with skin and hair under my fingernails and sails torn by storms that refuse to drown me, those cruel...this is nothing i could manage anymore i refuse to try any longer. everyone of your heartbeats i felt while you were lying with naked breast on my naked chest returns to me like an earthquake and the storms are the soft sighing in your sleep on those early mornings when i was wide awake and watched your face like a treasure that i had to guard, the most beautiful and fragile thing, so precious that i did not dare to touch it i would give EVERYTHING now if i had, if i had if i could once again. you can tear the paper but you can never tear the pain and the passion etched into it you FOOL! breathe paula breathe cedric breathe eve breathe blaine breathe suzy breath you breathe you breathe you
[april 23, 2002]and again i'm fingering the ring i'm not wearing anymore. what a let down again! i went to apply for another room tonight: 180 euros, pretty central. when i was ringing the doorbell a voice was saying through the intercom: "uh, I'm sorry, but the room is let already!" just great! boy, i'm really way too tired for those games!
today thomas gave his lecture on 'matter that bodies' which basically boiled down to deleuze against butler. deleuze won. and as usual it was magic. watching and listening to him is so fascinating because suddenly you start to UNDERSTAND things! unfortunately when he stops talking everything is as mysterious as before. i'd need a portable, pocket seized thomas and whenever i need i can take him out and place him on my palm and he'd explain and inspire and remind me that "magic is alive". i think that thomas is for me for thinking what suzanne is for me for singing. in the last part of his talk he brought up the deleuzian notion of CHARM and i'm sure that he is NOT reading the online journal although you might get the impression because just a few days after eve gave me that magnolia soundtrack and i listened to 'wise up' on repeat he said that he needed the 'wise up' scene from 'magnolia' for his lecture. but i'm not astonished about anything anymore. blaine asked me to write a book review for 'gender forum'. they must be pretty desperately seeking for participants. for a moment i though about reviewing xxxx's book on simone de beauvoir. but then not really. it's a quarter to nine and i think i'm trying to call cedric now.
[april 24, 2002]great! i just realized that i forgot to uploade today's entry. now i'm on the way back to b. and the text is on the pc in c.
this morning i packed all my things in the apartment and swept the floor and prepared everything for my moving out on saturday. and the only cd i had not packed away yet was pj harvey - bad choice! because almost every song was like, oh well, you know. i don't have to describe it anymore. she started to sing with thom about the mess they were in and this love and their love and i was the obstacle, i was the thing that's in the way, blocking, holding back, binding, the thing you wish to erase you wish to go away because it is standing between you and your happiness, you and your love, you and oliver and i felt humiliation and sadness and anger. i wanted to hurt her, for a few seconds i wanted to hurt her badly, as badly as her involuntary but overpowering love for him hurts me. and then i hated myself for hating her and the anger was not of a healing kind. i realize that from all reasons i though of for staying in b. the smallest is the largest. i haven't lost you at all. quite the contrary. 'you are with me even more than you ever were before' and i don't know what to do about it. i'm feeling so helpless. i have too much passion, i don't have enough passion. all the trees are green suddenly. how to get through this summer with its warm nights, its short skirts, its intimacy acted out on the streets, in the cafes, in the parks, on the sidewalks? the indigo girls will play in c. next week. i have neither the time, nor - and that's even more important and unfortunate - the money to see them. plus i know i know i know that it would be really bad to be bound to a great job that i don't really want and to stand in front of a stage looking up to everything i ever wanted to be. i'm nuts. and just as i write this, 'fugitive' comes on and hide yourself for me hide yourself for me. i still can't understand. i could fill the entire page with these four words. i could fill the entire world with them. i still can't understand. i'm still thinking it will change someday. i'm tired. i'm missing you so that i don't find any image, any metaphor, any comparison. this is nothing that i could describe. and maybe that's the cruelest thing. i can't think you & him, i can't. that's not you, that's not you! i wish i could make any sense out of all this. dear reader, i'm so afraid and why are you silent , why have you been silent for all these months when all i hoped for was your voice on the answering machine and your name in my mailbox. it's pathetic. i don't know what to do i want to go home, that's what i really want breathe, breathe home breathe home breathe home.
[later]
'with all my words my silence being one'every day i get new bills: telephone bill, electricity bill, bill for the german association for american studies, bill for my bahncard, gas bill, bill for the repair of my guitar. i'm not really motivated to prepare 'poetry' for monday now. but i will have to. i had a strange call, two actually, on the mail box of my cellular phone: it's usually turned off because i find it quite annoying to telephone in public, but the virtual answering machine takes the calls and i had two calls yesterday at 2 in the afternoon, but the caller left no message. i only have the number from which s|he has called. and it's not a number that i know. unfortunately i could not find out whose number it is, only that the call came from 'Westinnen bei Hamm, Westfalen'. the only way to find out is to call that number back, and although i feared some rip off [you know you get connected to a number you pay a fortune for calling] i tried but nobody answers. probably somebody simply dialed the wrong number but why two times and what if she didn't but why from westinnen when her sister lives in unna?[april 25, 2002]
[later]how can you do that how can you do that how can you do that??? i don#t know what to do anymre. it doesn't stop. i want to call you. i want to see you. i want to see you i want to heare your voice. i want to be with you again. everything else is not important. why don't you write me????????
[still later]went for another walk. ate a salad. tried to relax. failed. talked to thomas who sent the new version of his article. surrendered. tried to call eve, but she's not home. listened to paula. surrendered. cried. surrendered. was ready to go over and ring her dorrbell. 'i need your love. i need your love. god speed your love to me' joni's silken voice echoes through the room and it's gotten dark. dyed my hair. my legs are trembling. for no reason. my neck hurts. i wish i had my guitar. i wish eve was back home. i wish i could start anew with you. everything is wrong.
[april 26, 2002]the day started on a humorous note: the rechenzentrum - the administration of the university responsible for soft and hardware - asked whether we have the rights for the short video sequences that thomas 'cites' in his online version of 'matter that bodies' (marilyn monroe, madonna, magnolia, american beauty, matrix). rights? HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! They might as well ask whether i get paid enough.
it's cloudy and the forecast has predicted rain and decreasing temperatures. blaine is in paris on a basketball match.
[later]the worst thing is the feeling of missing so much, of being at the wrong place all the time. i wanted to spend as much time with her as possible, i wanted to share as much as possible, my whole life, and now the realization explodes in my mind like a bomb over and over that i will never share anything with her again, no song, no summer day, no evening with friends, no touch or kiss or smell of hair and what now that all this is gone, the hope is gone. 'i hate what this life does to people' i will never spend time with her again, i will never be able to be with her as much as i long to, as much as i need to. there is nothing to do. there is no reason. i just want to cut off. from you and from my need for you. i don't know what to say, i just don't know i don't know. i want to be with you, that's all i want, i want to be with you i'm missing you so much tonight and on all the nights that have passed. i'm shaking when i think how many fucking beschissene fucking nights there still will be all those years, months, weeks when you're with him and not with me. ich bin ratlos. ich bin müde. bist du glücklicher ohne mich? if you're happier without me then i have no reason to complain. aber ich vermisse dich so! es ist so lange her und es ist noch so wie als du mich bei uwe und christiane zum abschied umarmt hast and you said: i will think a lot about you in the coming days. did you? did you? did you? ich wünschte, ich wäre da gestorben. where ARE YOU????
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[april 27, 2002]
a thunderstorm is hanging over the city. i'm just back from cologne: moving out of my flat there. it all went well. even though my landlord did not really turn up at the date we fixed, so i just left the keys. i did not care. was too tired. i will be meeting with eve tonight.
About a month or so later he said | "Why can't you be happy | You make me feel helpless when you get this way" | I said "I'm up to my neck in alligators | Jaws gnashing at me | Each one trying to pull a piece away" | Darling, you can't slay these beasts of prey | Some bad dreams even love can't erase | But in France they say | Everyday | Love puts on a new face | He said "I wish you were with me here | The leaves are electric | They burn on the river bank | Countless heatless flames" | I said "Send me some pictures then | And I'll paint pyrotechnic | Explosions of your autumn till we meet again | I miss your touch and your lips so much | I long for our next embrace" | But in France they say | Everyday | Love puts on a new face
so i don't have a flat in cologne anymore now. i will have to see where to stay next week and the weeks in the future. maybe i will just drive back home at night: three hours in the morning, three hours at night. the rain is running down the windowpane endlessly, new wet threads starting where old ones fade into mere drops.
[april 28, 2002]it's 10 in the morning and still raining. went to see a film with eve yesterday, after that we spent the rest of the evening talking and listening to element of crime. the other week a friend of hers gave her a cassette with eoc songs on it and she wrote me a mail asking me whether i knew 'weisses papier' and she said: 'this is your music, i mean music that you have done' so i told her all about how rob used the guitar riff from 'weisses papier' for the solo in 'ohne dich' and how it was the first concert that xxxx and i went to see together and how magical it was and that we kept talking about it years later and how i found the two element of crime tickets on her desk shortly after she left me to be with oliver. yesterday night eve also said how much the sound of eoc reminded her of the 'underwater guitars' in some of our songs. Zu spielen gab es nie zuviel und abends wußt ich immer, wo du warst / Was haben wir geliebt / Damals hinterm Mond. today cedric & tara will come by and in the evening there's band rehearsal.
all those things that are lying around now, all the things from my apartment in cologne that are here now, changing in significance. things that do not belong to me, your carpet, your pillows, you blanket. do you want them back? they don't smell of you any longer, there's nothing that connects them to you except for the memories they evoke. but these are MY memories, i wonder whether there are things that remind you. but i think i took everything. i tried to take everything when i moved out. i thought we'd have a lifetime. the bad things are the singular events that i keep remembering, not the overall, grand feeling but the small moments like that night when you were so desperate because your exams didn't go the way you wanted and you were so in tears, you were lying in my arms on your bed in our first flat and you wouldn't calm down, it was dark, the door was open and the light from the corridor fell on you as i hugged you so hard trying to keep your body from trembling and shaking all over you were so close i could smell your tears you were so small so vulnerable and i realized that you were all that matters to me that i wanted to protect you with my life. those small moments come back again and again over and over over over over. why couldn't i be all you need?
it is still raining ceaslessly, washing paper, blossoms, leaves down
the street while the drops crash onto the asphalt like in an infinitely
complex rhythm that i have to decipher. i'm so cold.
FIND ME PLEASE OH FIND ME
[april twentynine twothousandandtwo]dear exexexex,
i'm on the train back home. the seminar was fine i guess, although we didn't manage to do all i had planned. i wanted to play some sylvia plath and anne sexton to them but there was not enough time. i'm realizing how my lack of spoken english limits my fluency and my wit and my ability to create an interesting & didactic lesson.the four hours went by much too fast. i'm tired now but i managed to get the train at 5:15 which of course was delayed half an hour. so i'll be home at 8:30 just to get up tomorrow morning at 5 again. there are dark, violet clouds on the horizon ready to pour down a thousand times the tears i've cried since you've left which would drown the world. i'm getting corny again - sorry. but i'm tired. i think i've said this before. today & all the other days. i want to see you again. seeing you again scares the shit out of me i'd rather drop dead but then i'd rather drop dead than not seeing you again. PHEW FOR A MINUTE THERE I LOST MYSELF I LOST MYSELF:
we did drama today. the conventions of. the differences between the novel and. example: cat on a hot tin roof. 2nd part: poetry: metric, stylistic devices, concrete poetry. examples: shakespeare sonnet no xx, adrianne rich: aunt jennifer's tigers. but we did not get to talk about the latter because we talked too long about the shakespeare. they really had troubles finding the point: 'since nature prick'ed thee out...' nobody appreciates a good pun anymore! blaine said that it was good. i can't do anything else but trust him there - 88 students today. pretty good oral participation. still i would have loved to play the poems. we did not really get to the fun in poetry. the heavy clouds have moved closer but they haven't reached us yet. i suppose it will start pouring down the minute i get off the train. i'm missing you. how often do i have to write this until you believe me? how often do i have to write this until you love me again?
what i see: trees, cows, fields, clouds, trains, people, your face, woods, the horizon, raindrops, my reflection in the window, houses, gardens, bushes, cars, your voice, satelite dishes, street lamps, chimmneys, roofs, trees, bikes, your lips, churches, birds, gütersloh hauptbahnhof, signs, wind, rain, platforms, wires, your heartbeats, advertisment, graffitty, iron constructions, more cars, gras, hills, bridges, farms, brooks, avenvedde bahnhof, even worse signs, rain, rain, rain, ikea, who will pick me up at the station? i go missing in my own life. repeating this won't make your feelings change a single inch.
[later]it's 9:30, i'm home. finally. home, well, at least in my apartment. i've got the tv on for company. a video tape of b's 'endgame'. ...und das ganze leben wartet man darauf, dass ein leben daraus werde.
[april 30, 2002]very bad news: suzanne's brother tim passed away tonight.