[july 1, 2002]

I forgot to say that Suzanne said she'll be in the Netherlands in Ocober!

And to Philip (Hofmann):
ich soll dir ein dickes Dankeschön sagen!
- demnächst mehr!

Nothing much (not much)
Moni.

[july 2, 2002]

dear blaine,
i'm sitting at the ebertplatz and i'm more drunk than i've been in my life. i've just said good-bye to you & nicole & achim & now i'm sitting here at 1 in the morning among other people who are coming home or going to work. in my head mark eitzel 'everything is beautiful' and in front of me two billboards: 'Anders ist besser' & my vision blurs and i look up and put on my sunglasses and try to smile.

[july 3, 2002]

be prepared for some strange ramblings:
it's 8:40 in the morning and yesterday has been one confusing day.
moni has mailed yesterday afternoon and here's what she had to say about giving [atoms-ust] to suzanne:
 

some things got clearer, some not, at least i realized that the feeling was very indifferent: it wasn't happiness and it wasn't sadness, it was changing, oscillating, shimmering depending on the thoughts and joys and fears surrounding it.

here's what i came up with: first of all i realized that i don't have any strategies to deal with intensities anymore, which actually has been quite clear for a long time. i think it has to do with xxxx because our relationship used to take this energy but now i don't really know what to do with it [i'm sorry, i'm not very eloquent today...]. the first impulse when i read the mail was to call her and shout into the telephone and then go to her and hug her and squeeze her until i realized a couple of seconds later that this isn't an option anymore: i can't share anymore. that's the point. and sometimes emotions [bad word but i know no better] are so big and overwhelming that you've got to share them. and this has also been the reason why i did not go to the concert because i wanted to avoid intensities, and meeting suzanne backstage is - of course - the hell of an intensive moment. so this is one point: no more intensities, no alarms and no surprises, please.

suzanne has been the signifier for an imaginary realm that i was thinking and wishing myself to: a realm in which people were actually spending their days writing songs, recording, performing. a realm in which i always dreamed to participate in. but i guess i pretty soon realized that this was a dream and that it makes my life easier to know that this isn't an option, that being part of this realm is just out of question, impossible and not worth a shot. otherwise i would have to concentrate all my energy and power to the goal of making music. she was the signifier for a dream that i kept dreaming from time to time but that i swept away from the dream screen with a sigh again and again. [i suppose eventually my continious sighing really made xxxx look for somebody who is more fun to be with] i just forced myself NOT to think it, not to long for it. especially since rob had died. before i might have had hope but when he died the magic in songwriting died as well in a way. in a sad way. hell, i don't even know how to express this properly.

but suddenly there's a transgressing of the border between the dream and my life: it is flowing into my life: it's like it would say: this imaginary realm is not so far away and you are ALREADY PART OF IT in a strange way: for some reason i apparently am somebody that suzanne is thinking about, even worrying about. the border is crossed from the other side and i'd never expected this and it is confusing me, it's like the whole world starts turning and shifting and nothing is at it's usual place anymore.

and suddenly i find myself caught in the old longing, the old feeling again: there's violence in my mind and i don't want to be here i feel like missing something as if there's a place to be right now and i'm so far away from it and i'm missing my only chance for everything, i'm missing my life that takes place somewhere else, somewhere my dreams are staged, are acted out and i'm not there to be in it. and to make it even worse you are sneaking up again from all four dark corners of the room and i don't want to be here i want to be within this source, within this light, the warmth, your eyes, your smell, your voice i get a glimpse of it now and again, in memories and mails and modern songs all senses are sharpened and i'm feeling twice as intense and that's what i was afraid of WE ARE FORTUNATE ONES FORTUNATE ONES I SWEAR!!!!!

[july 4, 2002]

from a mail to paula that i wrote on the train back to bielefeld yesterday evening:

the clouds are rushing across the sky much too fast - everything is moving much too fast: this train, my thoughts, the rain and my heart and xxxx's love that's rushing further away from me with every second that passes. i want to freeze the moment and momentum. i want photographs, not movies. i want control. i want security. i detest changes. i want to freeze that short moment of pure joy i felt when i first read what suzanne said when moni gave her the [atoms-dust] cd. the joy has vanished, the storm remains. it has shaken the little snow dome that is my life and the fear is falling down in white, soft, flakes. i'm looking for the meaning behind all this, i'm looking for the big plan although i know that there isn't any. and this scares me. i don't want to be here. i'm lost among these strangers on the train, this is not where i belong. i feel save reading you. i felt save loving xxxx. it's crazy but i even felt save in those short moments that i shared with suzanne. more moments that i want to freeze. "each life has it's place - maybe some things are never meant to be found" it's like xxxx took all places with her, there's only non-space around me. i feel an urgency but i cannot tell for what. for a feeling? for a screaming? for a beginning or an arrival? an arrival? an arrival. that's it but how am i supposed to arrive when the aim is moving twice as fast away from me? and what is the aim? i'm dissolving like all the movement would take me apart piece by piece, like the wind would blow me to bits. i'm thinking a lot about you. it confuses me that suzanne thought about me. it's like she had said: "i had no idea you were burning here" and now the room is lurching. i don't understand how i can keep burning for so long, why haven't i just burned away? what is fueling these flames? what is feeding the fire? i should have turned to ash months ago already but i just won't stop burning.

philipp, i can't tell you how, but someday you will find your place. even if it is a no-place. i can't articulate this at all. i can't say what i mean. i feel such solidarity with you. i hate to keep throwing things i write at you, but i wrote this sunday night. in a weird way it seems to fit what i'm trying to tell you.

i am just trying to find out how to begin
i am just trying to find out how to leave
the beautiful things you write in your dream stay in your dream
"that was good," said the woman, getting up off the floor
"knock me out again"
this is the wrong way to tell a story
those broken-up roads will get you here too
the clowns are fired up in the anteroom
they will never get to perform in this story
if you're afraid of the sun --
who's afraid of the sun? right, wrong thing to say
say you're lost before dawn
you keep meeting yourself on the highway
"give me another shot" says the woman as she leans on the balcony railing
say you're afraid of meaning nothing
take the broken road here, the yellow lines transmit your position
take the storyline here, the black lines tell you where to go
listen to yourself as you watch the crickets
"take me on" says the woman as she turns to go
watch yourself as you say nothing
this is the story ending and beginning again
this is the broken-up road stretching out beyond itself to get here
i am just trying to find out if the wind is in your window
i am just trying to find out if i'm really here

i met tara and cedric today at the university in bielefeld. tara was giving a talk at a small conference for her former professor. and speaking of professors thomas left for the states today. yesterday he said good-bye to everyone and i gave him a copy of [atoms-dust] and i even hugged him good-bye - which he did not expect and so he had no chance to defend himself. so he's gone now for 9 months :o(((((

and then there's something else that i need to write about. eve has written a mail and said that she couldn't see me anymore because i obviously did not have the same feelings for her than she had for me. and thus she'd had no chance but to make a cut. i asked her to think about it but she said that she'd made up her mind. it didn't have to be a permanent decision but for the near future she did not want to have any contact anymore.

[later]

[july 5, 2002]

[later]

[later]

and then the old song: rob's guitar introducing the chorus that is almost happy, that had no bitterness when i wrote it so many years ago for her and i remember playing a recording of it to her one night in my old room and she cried because she was so moved and i was astonished if i had only known if i had only known what would happen to rob what would happen to her what would happen to us and then his guitar is firing distorted flagolet-notes into the chorus like pearls like tears like blood like weak hearts like bored eyes like a love that will never arrive again.

[ein wenig] || blindhübsch steht sie da | zum bestaunen schön | macht sie wieder ein lied wahr | manche sachen sagt sie nie | wie eine bombe tickt ihr herz | und artig lacht sie über jeden schmerz | dann liest sie die sterne | und ich lese sie || sie liebt mich, sie liebt mich nicht | von herzen, mit schmerzen | ein wenig, nein gar nicht || sie regnet durch die zeilen | buchstabiert die lust | nur um mit nassem haar | vor mir zu stehn, mich anzusehn | in riechweite ihr duft sagt sie: | "du fühlst dich an wie luft." || sie liebt mich, sie liebt mich nicht | von herzen, mit schmerzen | ein wenig, nein gar nicht || "ich kann den himmel riechen" | sagt sie sacht und lacht | doch ich weiß sie hätte sich beinah | selber umgeschrieben || sie liebt mich, sie liebt mich nicht | von herzen, mit schmerzen | ein wenig, nein gar nicht

[july 6, 2002]

[july 7, 2002]

[later]

it's almost 2 in the morning and i'm lying on the floor of cedric's study, listening to 'levils of edit' from [atoms-dust] my body seems strangely alien to me. my thoughts as well. sometimes i ask myself whether the longing for xxxx is the only thing that still holds my life together: "and beauty and perfection and derangment". in this order.

[july 8, 2002]

[later]

[later]

[july 9, 2002]

[july 10, 2002]

UH BOY!!!!!!! i've just talked to cedric on the phone. xxxx has been reading the online journal. you know me good enough by now to imagine the storm i'm in now. for a moment everything went white. like you're staring into the flashlight when you're photographed. and for seconds you're blinded and the world comes back only slowly: outlines first in black and white and then the shapes are filled with colors and it's only then that you can start focusing things again. i can't focus anything. when i blink there's still the imprint of the bright halo on my retina. HOW DARE SHE!!! of course this was what i wanted! of course this was what i did not want! i don't know i don't know. this is almost a reason to end the journal. this is almost its end and you know why you know why you know why? because all these fucking words were not more than one last pathetic attempt. i think that's what they really were: one last pathetic attempt to do SOMEthing, to try SOMEthing, one last pathetic attempt to be lovable. so when she read this and she did not react then what is the point of this anyway? paula? angelina? kati? could you tell me? what am i supposed to do NOW? is there any sense in keeping on writing? how will it influence what i write and how i write. fucking hell, i'd NEVER thought that she'd actually had the nerves to read this! great! this proves the uselessness of six months of daily writing. this proves the impotence of all that i thought would express what i am. this proves that all the fear was justified. welcome to wasteland. from one moment to the next everything i still did is so ridiculously pointless. everything i still am, even. this is nothing i was prepared for. who is this? who is this person who has actually read parts of this? who is this person who dares singing 'the queen and the soldier' with me when she already knew that she would leave me for somebody else the next morning? FUCKING HELL!!!!!!! with whom have i been living together for 5 and a half years???????? niemand hat mich so verarscht wie du als du mir sagtest: ich liebe dich! a fuck you did!! what i regret having written here: EVERYTHING! why did i only write when i was down? great! i've just confirmed all you ever hated about me!! it all sounds like you. this is not about you. bloody hell!

LOEOTOOMOEOOMOAOKOEOOOONOEOOTOHOIONOGOOCOLOEOAORO:

THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU! go to hell! fuck! i'll write what i want! i write what i like! i write what i feel! i don't give a fucking damn about what you're thinking about it! screw you! this hasn't been about you for a long time. ever since i turned your name to four xs. you are only standing in. you are only a variable in my life! screw you! i'm gonna find somebody who can fill out this place, somebody who's up to the task! somebody who deserves me and my words and my songs and my strangely twisted heart! even if it will take all my fucked up life!!!!!! i can handle this and i can handle your grandmother as well! this is between me and her! i don't need your interference! i don't need your help! go fuck oliver but don't ever think that you'd have to arrange things in the background! i can handle this! this is just somebody who cares about me! i've already dealt with other things! with people who gave a fuck about me!

and now i'm going shopping!
 

it took a | long time to | become the thing  | i am to you and you won't | tear it apart | without a fight | without a heart

[later]

i'm scared. and if all of the above is just a lie this isn't.

[later]

You were in my dream three nights ago. You and I were walking around your apartment (or what I have dreamt is your apartment twice now), which had many dim corridors and large sparsely furnished rooms. There were a lot of people there and music was playing, some low-grade forgettable pop record. I was looking for you and when I finally found you in the kitchen, we stood there by the counter holding each other while someone I didn't know kept opening the refrigerator door.

[july 11, 2002]

went shopping today: a new pair of sunglasses. talked to cedric on the phone. still no comments on the rest of [atoms-dust]. hm. difficult. the weather is better than yesterday: partly sunny, no rain, wind but no storm. i've almost corrected all the essays and when i'm finished i'll be going for a nice, relaxed walk! maybe - on the way back home - i'll get some beer again. sometimes it works in getting away from myself. the new indigo girls cd on repeat. window open. me humming. and the fate of ten students in my hands : HAHA [diabolical laughter] and by the way: thomas mailed! he's fine but of course his email address didn't work properly. what's new?

[later]

i wish i could write about anything other than myself. if i had used all the words i made - all the wailing i did - for a book, for a novel, a collection of short stories or a volume of poems. i'd HAVE something then, i'd accomplished something. all the words heaped up here had just one single purpose. and they did not work. so from one moment to the other they've turned useless. pointless. like i never wrote them. i think i might have overreacted a little yesterday night? or maybe i haven't i don't know. who cares? i don't. i'm feeling so stupid, writing all this and then knowing that she might have read each and every entry. and that it did nothing. it's like all the months at the end of our relationship, those tiresome, fearful months when i tried to save something, when i tried so hard to make it right, to be who you wanted - all the time. but it couldn't make a difference.

and while i'm, trying so hard to explain this, to find words for a suítuation that even *i* don't understand yet, paula is talking and here's what she's saying and what she's saying is so much to the point that it pierces my mind and my heart and it is of course exactly what i am unable to express:

"no, this writing is not exempt. it remains - like all writing - a pathetic attempt to make you understand that *my heart is breaking*"

all i wrote could not make her understand. all i wrote could not reach her. the question is whether it can reach anybody. sometimes i just want to sit down on the floor in the middle of my room, bind my knees with my arms to my chest and be very, very silent, waiting to be found. "i was lost ten years ago and i still am. maybe some things are never meant to be found" paula wrote. but what if she's right. i don't want to keep on thinking about it, i don't want to keep worrying. i just want to sit here, curled up while "my heart ticks inside me like rain", almost silent, just whispering a single phrase endlessly like a mantra: "find me please oh find me"

[feb 25, 2022]

did i mention that the seminar blaine & i will be doing next semester is called "terribly in love"? it's a kombinationsseminar meaning that i will do a general introduction to [american] literature and then a more specific part will follow focusing on tragic relationships in 19th century british gothic literature: frankenstein, dracula, wuthering heights. maybe we can add a short story by poe or carrington, the oval lady/portrait perhaps. to have at least SOME american content. but i can already see everybody grinning broadly when reading the title: schulz/hofmann: terribly in love. but then blaine had already thought up the title long before we decided to do the seminar together. and everybody's thinking i'm gay anyway because of all the time that we're spending together.

[later]

while i was waiting at the subway station i was sitting next to a young woman who kept smiling onto the floor and writing on a small piece of paper and i had almost talked to her, i had almost asked: prose or poetry? i was so curious what she might be writing down. but then i thought that she must think that i'm some kind of freak, talking to a total stranger in a subway station. when my tram came she kept sitting there and all the way back home i hated myself for not being brave enough, for not being bold enough, for not simply doing what i feel like doing. and it all boils down to this: i don't want to be alone.

[later]

[july 13, 2002]

when i visited my parents today my father kept talking about his computer. we've tried for weeks to install an internet connection, but he only has a password and log in for internet banking and for his online telephone bill and i told him again and again that he first needs a log in and a password for a provider to get access to the internet. "but i have a log in and a password" he insisted again and again and i tried to explain to him again and again that this is the password and the log in for the online banking but that he could not do any online banking unless he's connected to the internet. so now he's asked a colleague from work for help. "he's an expert on isdn..." my father told me today "...and he said that there's nothing about isdn that he wouldn't know..." "and, does it work now?" i asked, sighing silently. "no, but he's found out why it doesn't work: i only have a log in and a password for online banking. but i need a password and a log in for a provider!"

hm, i don't think that sharing the third beer with you is an option any longer. sorry!

[july 14, 2002]

i got a mail from kate yesterday night [xxxx and i got to know in her seminar when we were still studying and our relationship started when we were translating a short novel of d.h.lawrence with kate] and she wrote to me and it was about what she thought went wrong with xxxx and me and there was one paragraph that hit me like a bullet with a short, sharp pain: "I once met the two of you and xxxx had cut off her beautiful long hair and she had a hairstyle just like s.v. (and i thought: oh boy! that's how bad it is already) and then i said: xxxx has cutt off her hair. and it's a hairstyle just like s.v.'s! and then you said: yes, unfortunately it's only the hairstyle."

did i really say that? and i even had the nerves to say that i never meant to hurt you! i'm so sorry. i didn't want this. i didn't want to hurt you. not then and not four days ago. i'm an idiot. i'm a self-centered idiot who doesn't deserve better. but then i was so unprepared, i was so unprepared for our relationship, i wish i had made all these mistakes with somebody else. long before you. i'm so sorry. i can't make up for this. i wish i could. i always only wanted that you loved me instead of wanting that you're happy. THIS is the important point. THIS is what should make my heart and arms mend. that you're happy, regardless with whom. and i got so desperate for your voice and for your laughter that i dug out that tape that you gave me five years ago after we went with kate and her husband on that nightwalk and it starts with you laughing and your young voice and it is the first time that i'm hearing your voice for seven months and it is a mistake it is a mistake ich will das nivcht mehr AIN'T YOU THE LUCKY ONE AIN'T YOU THE LUCKY ONE INTO THE LUCKY ONE

i'm just back from rehearsal. new messages on server. xxxx mailed. i don't understand aynthing any more. talked to cedric on the phone. i'm tired. there's one thing he said that summed it up: "es geht darum, es auszuhalten." "it's all about bearing it." i don't know any longer. apparently she's recognized old structures of complaining and whining in the diary. i wish i could fly somewhere, just lift off and rise throught the ceilling and throught the roof and into whatever sky. it's all about bearing it. my hands are cold and i wish there was anything i could do to force you to love me my hands are cold how can you ask for help when there's no way to help i know that this is nothing that you will understand no matter how much i'm writing, the more i write the less will you understand but what else do you want me do what else do i want me do? auch noch still sein? i don't knwo what then to do. "i thought i could let you go in grace- but i've got to think again" maybe that's what's lacking. the grace. the dignity. am i throwing it away by writing? will the words leave room for dignity? will these rooms leave words for grace? maybe that's what broke the love. maybe that's what upsetting her even now. but i don't really know, i only know from what cedric told me. she just wrote - and very politely so - that she didn't want her name to appear so publicly and that she did not want certain images [that i ahve deleted in the meantime] to be presented here. i'm tired. my hands are cold. do you think this is war? then something went badly wrong. i don't want to hurt anybody. really. i'm sorry. my hands are so cold. i failed so completely and devastatingly that it's laughable. ain't you the lucky one? ain't you the lucky one?

i thought that for some reason i had to prove how much i loved her. and that the way to do this was to articulate how much not being with her affected me. that putting the pain into words would be evidence for the feelings i have for her. but it all went wrong because i guess it looked like it was not about the feelings i have for her but about the feelings i have for me, soll heissen: self-pity. i don't know why i thought that proving my love for her would change anything. because of course it is not about my love for her but about her lack of love for me, which isn't anything i could cure. which isn't even anything that has to be cured from her - and probably the rest of the world's - point of view. i'm an idiot. the bad thing is to realize that there is no way to win back love once it's lost. to get it back. to get a second chance. once the person who formerly loved you gives up on you there's not much more that you can do. and maybe that's what i did not understand. why she gave up on me. in my point of view just like that and from one day to the next. from her - and probably the rest of the world's - point of view slowly and painfully and not without giving me chance after chance that i blew one by one.

tomorrow i'll be going to cologne again. i'll have to do the course on my own since blaine is in england on a wedding. nicole mailed and sort of asked me out for next week. it's still raining. "some of them never tell you just how much love they give away..." my hands are cold.

[july 15, 2002]

Subject: go on reading the stars
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 13:52:17 +0200
From: angelene@XXXXXX.XXX

dear philipp,

i was in a hospital for the 'mentally deranged' ;-) i hope this won't happen again in the closer future.
i am not too well.
read through your journal.
what i read there makes me so sad. you are way too angry. you should not use such strong words to express your sadness. be soft. be soft with yourself. by using those sharp words you just cut yourself.

months ago i wrote the following

"my childhood crashes upon me - each time spring rushes in. i can see myself as a little kid. just big enough to lay my eyes upon the table without having to climb a chair. the fears that filled my chest, that seemed to choke me and eat my air-pipe. i still remember hearing the early bird, seeing the sun in a bright blue sky, snow on the ground out of which grew lilies of the valley.  earth, snow and plants mixing into a divine cocktail of scented spring air that entered my nostrils evoking a sublime feeling that still endures and which i will keep with me all my life long. a feeling i can only make up by myself, which no one else can give me but which i always searched in people, hoping they would come near me, come close to me. they came close but never entered my blood. that was always only me. i gave myself divine feelings. that's why i need myself so much. for there is nobody who can give me so much strength and belief and faith in what is beautiful and sacred. that's always only with me. music can give me that, too, but that's no social thing."

we are alone - that's all that it boils down to.
we bleed, we cry, we lose hope.
nobody can help you or me.
we got to get through - your friend is right
we got to walk right through the fire, through broken glass, through the cold and the rain there is no shelter
and i am sure your ex-girlfriend knows that as well

[...]

angelina

--- original Nachricht Ende ----

--Nette Leute zum Flirten, Lachen und Verlieben,fuer Reisen, Sport und Freizeit!
http://www.XXXXXXX.XXX

[july 16, 2002]

before: i'm spending the evening [partly accompanied by eva] sitting on the roof in the late evening light. it's 21:15 and the sun is just right: not too hot & not too bright but warm enough to flow over the skin like water. this is exactly the kind of urban beauty that's too good to be true. the swallows are circling the roofs in flocks, rising up and diving back into the thick summer air boisterously like dolphins. the top of the huge tree that is looking over the roof and the vertical meadows of ivy on the gray walls are waving slowly like seaweed under water. chimneys in uncountable shapes & sizes, their blood red brick skin shining brightly like corrals, the roofing felt is reflecting the sun like dark volcanic sand and the satellite dishes are huge opened shells filtering the air for informationplankton. i'm sitting here waiting for a white whale to pass by. i wish i could take you up down here and we'd watch together.

song of the day: radiohead, knives out.

I want you to know
He's not coming back
Look into my eyes
"I'm not coming back"

So knives out
Catch the mouse
Don't look down
Shove it in your mouth

"If you'd been a dog
They would have drowned you at birth"

Look into my eyes
It's the only way you'll know I'm telling the truth

So knives out
Cook him up
Squash his head
Put him in the pot

I want you to know
He's not coming back
He's bloated and frozen
Still there's no point in letting it go to waste

"The reason I write | is to make something | as beautiful as you are" (l. cohen)
i realize that my view on the online journal has changed significantly over the last days and the recent events. why do i write at all. what is the purpose? what is the reason? well, for one the reason i write is to end with a paragraph like that one about the moon in june. sometimes this happens: and you write 10 or 12 pages just to stumble over one such paragraph. that's the reason. not for revenge. my over-reaction a week ago was wrong. it was fueled by disappointment with myself, it did not have anything to do with her. and still i catch myself switching on the pc, hoping that i've received another mail from her. every time i press the get message button my heart starts beating like a bass drum inside my head. and i start reading all these past months with her eyes and although she had only read parts of the journal and she probably will never look at it again i'm writing like she would read this. i didn't do this before. that's why i always ended in the one way street of complaining and self pity and giving up dignity for honesty. no, not for honesty, but for whining. now i'm writing with the scissors in my head. i'm thinking more carefully about what impression my words will make, what image of myself i am presenting. i don't think that all what i've written in the past months does really reflect the way i've changed inside and outside. i sound the same, but i do think that i'm really at a different place than i was before: i've never been more open to other people, i've never met and sociated with so many different people - and i never enjoyed it more - than in the last months. i never before realized how much i need other people. to talk. to share. to think. to talk. to sing. to get drunk once in a while. i never felt weaker. but i also never felt stronger. i never had explored so thoroughly that what i refused exploring before. "do you really believe that?!" i hear you wondering and my answer is a firm "yes!"

sometimes the signals i get are blinding me. cedric told me that she was very angry about the journal for the reason that she was worried what other people will think about her, such as daniel and thomas. and that made me wonder why she is so worried about this. as if she would meet them ever again. those are people who are closely connected to me and which she will probably have no contact with again in her entire - hopefully long and prosperous - life. these are the small barbs that hook into my brain and tear threads of thoughts from the tissue.

i'm not writing for your pity or your sympathy. i'm writing to understand what i'm doing and why i'm doing it, what i'm feeling and why i'm feeling it. i write to differentiate. i write to split myself up because i can't really handle the whole of my self. i write to have narrated i and narrating i. i write to have a character, a narrator and an author and a text that doesn't need both. not because i want to tell her something. not because i want to hurt anybody. i try to write sense into this situation, into my life. i write to gain SOMEthing from this, even if it's just the hardly satisfactory feeling of at least having made words. i write because all of this must be good for something.

what i want is beauty that i'm part of. yes, i want the abstract beauty as well, the distant beauty, the one that passes you by in a song or a poem. but i also need the beauty i can touch, beauty that is connected to me if only by the touch of a hand or a pair of lips, if only by the touching of skin. her beauty was of such a kind. and the most beautiful thing about her were her eyes, and god knows how many whales were crossing the depth behind them. i should have tried to find out. i hope that he does. "i'm [...] trying to write something so beautiful it will make you ache from longing" (paula) her eyes could make me do that: ache from longing. her eyes were the most beautiful song i've ever heard. and i'm missing this. not in the nostalgic way that is so predominant in this writing. but i'm missing this kind of longing here eyes would give me, a longing that gave me strength and dignity for reasons i still don't understand.

[july 17, 2002]

• a horse
• a giraffe
• various teddy bears
• an elk
• a stork [!!]
• two mouses [diddl-kind! the horror! the horror!]

[later]

[july 18, 2002]

[later]

[july 19, 2002]

when i was in the supermarket around the corner they were playing paul simon's "slip slidin' away" and for a moment i was hypnotized by the music and i stood there motionless in front of the cereals for 3m49s and listened to it. God only knows, God makes his plan | The information's unavailable to the mortal man | We're workin' our jobs, collect our pay | Believe we're gliding down the highway, when in fact we're slip sliding away

[later | 22:59]

next week i will live in irene's flat. she's on a conference in berlin and asked me whether i would like to take care of her plants and her apartment (i met her this morning by accident at the station when she was boarding the ice to berlin. she said: "boy, you look like you haven't had any sleep at all!"). so i will be in cologne almost all week. i'm planning to work on the hollow earth articles: there still are a lot of german quotations that have to be translated. also i will finally try to visit the zoo! nicola's working there and we'll try to fix a date.

just a quick reminder: there's a questionnaire that you can fill out anonymously.

[july 20, 2002]

[later]

achim	cathrin, nicole, me and a guy from copenhagen	kristina
prof. kittler from berlin	irene	nicola

in the meantime it's 22:41 and dark outside. i've lighted a couple of candles and sade is singing. while i was writing a mail to john krafft just the other second i saw something like a shadow pass through the room. it was so real that i was petrified with fright for a moment. and the next thought was the worry whether she is alright or whether anything had happened...

[july 21, 2002]

Last night I thought I saw you sitting on my bed there, together with all the persons I so violently miss. Ghostlike the four of you were sitting there when I entered the lonely, dark apartment: my lover, Rob, Suzanne and you. And for a moment I thought I could see your face. "And something flickered for a minute and then vanished and was gone..." And I was missing you so much that my nose started to bleed. My heart has turned to bone, my mind left me alone, everything is at its place except for you. From the broken lines in space I can tell that it's not just the sun but your face that curves the room as well...

[later]

[july 22, 2002]

[later]

            They say that heaven is like TV
               A perfect little world
               that doesn't really need you
               And everything there
               is made of light
               And the days keep going by
               Here they come Here they come
               Here they come.

               Well it was one of those days larger than life
               When your friends came to dinner
               and they stayed the night
               And then they cleaned out the refrigerator -
               They ate everything in sight
               And then they stayed up in the living room
               And they cried all night

               Strange angels - singing just for me
               Old stories - they're haunting me
               This is nothing
               like I thought it would be.

               Well I was out in my four door
               with the top down.
               And I looked up and there they were:
               Millions of tiny teardrops
               just sort of hanging there
               And I didn't know whether to laugh or cry
               And I said to myself:
               What next big sky?

               Strange angels - singing just for me
               Their spare change falls on top of me
               Rain falling Falling all over me
               All over me
               Strange angels - singing just for me
               Old Stories - they're haunting me
               Big changes are coming
               Here they come
               Here they come.

i've invited eva and ralf for dinner tonight because i've been staying at their place in cologne for almost two months now. i'm feeling strangely lost today, not lost from her though but lost from everything else as well - and please note that i'm not complaining, just noticing. i was sitting in blaine's office the other minute and he was wondering why i was so down and he asked: "why are you so down? you're gonna meet great people tonight, you're gonna meet nice people tomorrow night and the night after and i'm thinking of doing a gameing-night on thursday. so, what do you want?" and i said: "i want to spend the night in a dark, warm room lit by candles, in the arms of somebody who will still be there the other morning, listen to sade and not speak a single word."

[july 23, 2002]

i'm off to irene's place now. see you tomorrow!

[july 24, 2002]

[later that night]

irene's flat is very nice: a bedroom/study and a kitchen and a big bathroom. there are photos all over the place: large ones and small ones. set up in elaborate frames or just pinned to the wallpaper. and it reminded me of my own flat with the gallery in the kitchen and the collection of loosely connected images above my desk. but the photos in irene's flat are quite different from those in mine because hers are photos of her family, of her friend, of her nieces, of herself, of her brother and her sister, of her parent's dog and among all those images there's not a single one of a singer/writer and more than i wondered what this says about her i wondered what this says about me.

[july 25, 2002]

my dream tonight: i was walking n. home and we were walking down a narrow beach at night. to our right there were huge cliffs, to our left the black sea was stretching endlessly into the dark. sharks kept swimming out of the water and onto the shore, trying to bite us. and i could not protect her.

when i came home yesterday night at about 2am i couldn't sleep. i was nervous. i ate a whole bar of chocolate. the resulting sugar flash did not really help to calm me down. listened to that song that i can't get out of my head for three days now and i realized that one of the most bitter parts (except for the lyrics in the first verse) is the one where she's singing: "You've Got Me Slightly Disappointed | Just A Bit And Just Enough | To Keep Me Up Another Night Waiting For Another..." and then there is a pause and you start to complete the line "...waiting for another guy, boy, lover, man, somebody who won't leave me, somebody who won't hurt me, somebody else because i'm through with you i'm over you somebody else who will find me..." and then the first chord of the new verse starts already although the line hasn't been finished yet and then she's singing the last word of the line into this new chord: "Waiting For Another...Day"

n. said: "home is where you're sleeping". and it is. it's just a matter of intonation. home is where YOU're sleeping.

tonight we'll meet at blaine's place: eva, ralf, s., me and another friend of blaine. looking forward to that. should be a fun evening. boy, i really need sleep this weekend. when i came into blaine's office yesterday morning he said to me: "you don't look very good!" and i'd had nine hours of sleep that night...

[july 26, 2002]

condition today: silently confused

[later]

[july 27, 2002]

i just was shopping for food and now i'm listening to a cd cedric has compiled for me that features nico "my funny valentine"; scott walker "on your own again"; the venus in furs "bitter-sweet"; simon & garfunkel "you don't know where your interest lies"; elvis costello "when i was cruel no.2"; robert forster "broken hearted people"; cockney rebel "sebastian"; wall of vodoo "ring of fire"; john cale "riverbank"; bob dylan "love sick"; sheryl crow "weather changed"; ryan adams "sylvia plath"; nick cave "here comes the sun"; tocotronic "schatten werfen keine schatten"; lou reed "ecstasy"; frank sinatra "my funny valentine". analyze that!

hm, that "sylvia plath" song of ryan adams is pretty good actually: I wish I had a Sylvia Plath | Busted tooth and a smile | And cigarette ashes in her drink | The kind that goes out and then sleeps for a week | The kind that goes out on her own | To give me a reason for well, I dunno | And maybe she'd take me to France | Or maybe to Spain and she'd ask me to dance | In a mansion on top of the hill | She'd ash on the carpet and slip me a pill | Then she'd get me pretty loaded on gin | And maybe she'd give me a bath | How I wish I had a Sylvia Plath | And she and I would sleep on a boat | And swim in the sea without clothes | With rain falling fast on the sea | While she was swimming away, she'd be winking at me | Telling me it would all be okay | Out on the horizon and fading away | And I'd swim to the boat and I'd laugh | I gotta get me a Sylvia Plath. "my blood beating the old tattoo i am i am i am" and now it's lou reed's "ecstasy" with that great guitar riff! and for some reason the lyrics remind me of that very old text that i once wrote and that i might use as a basis for the lyrics to that new chord pattern...

"the king and i."
I was hugged by a strange man today
who claimed he was a king.
He promised he'd make me a national treasure,
I thought his mind was deranged.
He made a step towards me
and held me in his arms.
His touch was quick and bright,
I just could not resist his charms
or his slender, skillful hand
with which he made me something
that I don't understand.
Heavenly heavy and frozen stiff
I'm competing with the sun.
The only thing that melts my heart
is when a lover speaks my name.
But every time I hear a voice
it sounds the same
it sounds the same.
The man has vanished, so has the sun
I haven't changed position since.
I love you. But that's hard to prove
cause I'm so ghastly valuable
that I can't move
I cannot move.

[later]

[july 28, 2002]

your green eyes spell a fear
that you have known before
that out of the dark waters
sharks will jump upon the shore

your green eyes spell a fear
that you know from your past
that on the way from hand to mouth
god will fall into the dust

dream from tonight: i had to do the written test for my high school exam and the question was: schreiben sie etwas schlaues über das fussballspiel bayern münchen gegen real madrid. write something smart about the soccer match bayern münchen vs. real madrid (actually i'm not quite sure whether it were these two teams. because 'real' madrid would just be too good to be true for any lacanian analyst...). my german teacher [whom i hated] was standing at my desk and everybody was writing and writing and the time was passing but i just did not know what to write. i only had two or three paragraphs which weren't even very good. and my teacher kept making fun of me.

[july 29, 2002]

[july 30, 2002]

[later]