[august 11, 2004 - the moment i wake up, before i put on my make up i say a little prayer for you]mails from and to paula. more photos :o) the omolouc paper is ready. nine pages. much chaos theory, little deleuze. thomas likes it. "very very nice." which i take as a compliment. going to see x. now. more later.
[august 12, 2004]wow, what a day! yesterday night x. and i went down to the river to watch the sky. a meteorite was passing over west-europe and the meteorologists predicted showers of falling stars. i saw three, x. saw two. then this morning x. and i were on the way to the university and when we where driving on our bikes over a crossing a big, black jeep stopped to let me pass and when i had reached the other side i heard x. screaming in my back and then i heard a crashing and when i looked back the jeep was standing in the middle of the road and x. was gone. my heart stood still. i jumped of the bike and hurried back and luckily she was not injured seriously. the car started to drive when i had passed and rolled over x.'s bike - which was broken. unfortunately the laptop is broken as well and also x. had a couple of minor injuries, scratches and a swollen knee. but no broken bones. we called the police who took photos and wrote a report. after that we went home again and stayed in bed all day.
[august, friday 13, 2004 - it's just that there's so much to do and i'm tired of sleeping]
i
keep having weird and intense dreams each night. which is very tiresome.
i don't really feel refreshed in the morning - it's as if i hadn't slept
at all or as if i had ben out all night while i was sleeping. this week
i have moved office. i'm in a room with bernd now. which means that i have
more space and also that it's quieter. it's also more boring. bernd's on
holiday so there's no one i could talk to. thomas is in the states with
his family until october. nina and achim are writing their exam thesis
at home. from time to time the princess pops in. but basically it's just
boring. it's friday the 13th. i'm not superstitious, but this morning my
bike had a flat tire :o( yesterday night x. and i were watching "psycho"
because she hadn't seen it yet. remember a couple of months ago when we
watched "vertigo" because she didn't know it yet and halfway through the
film she suddenly remembered that she HAD seen it after all? well, the
same thing happened yesterday night: "his mother is dead, isn't she?" she
said. great. i'll never watch an "unknown " movie with her again! also
i realized how very badly the film is dubbed. in the original norman says
to marion: "i'm sorry, my mother isn't quite herself today" which is of
course hilarious! in the german version he says: "Meine Mutter ist heute
nicht ganz beieinander!"
[later]did i mention that they're painting the house? it looks great. before the walls had a grayish, depressive color. now they are dark yellow. the entire backyard, including my balcony, has a brand new fresh feeling to it. it's really nice. who would have thought what a difference a couple of cans of paint make! ah and yes: today another fascist celebration of "natural" beauty and strength started and in the next couple of weeks the entire world will go crazy again about differences in time, width and height that can only be measured by nanotechnology and corrupt functionaries and global companies will earn themselves a golden asshole. yes, you've guessed it. the olympic games started today. what? bitter? moi??? only because i'm not a broad shouldered hunk bursting with testosterone!?!?!?! well, maybe you're right...
[august 14, 2004 -saturday afternoon: the weather has gotten a little better: it has cleared up and stopped raining. x. is visiting her family so i'm on my won this weekend. which is good because i want to work. i have to write a two page presentation of why cohen is connected to materializes. also i still need to change and improve the olomouc talk here and there. which i will do right now. by the way: i've found a great web site on the net (the archive of the canadian broadcasting cooperation) with four cohen radio and tv-interviews from the 60s. he says great things there such as: "Print is a minor form of invisibility. I think that if you really get good, then you do disappear..." which is a beautiful motto for a chapter of the thesis. together with deleuze's: "The aim, the finality of writing? Still way beyond a woman-becoming, a Negro-becoming, an animal-becoming, etc., beyond a minority-becoming, there is the final enterprise of the becoming-imperceptible."
[august 15, 2004 - this long, thin line...]well, actually today was gonna be a working day - with capital "w". i wanted to put down the two page description of my sub-project on cohen for the network-project. i thought it would be a piece of cake: after all the theoretical frame that i am supposed to use for that was supplied by bernd and myself! however things did not go according to plan. which is frustrating. i was not 'inspired'. which is bad, because i don't have the luxury of waiting for 'inspiration'. i have to write my fucking stuff. and write it at once and now. but i just couldn't do it. i had rough ideas but they simply refused to be shaped into intelligible sentences and paragraphs. i mean: come on! two pages! that's nothing!!!! panic crept up my neck and it does so now that i write this. and all the time i heard a soothing, sweet and seductive voice coming form the television set: "come here. little girl! get into the car! it's a brand new cadillac. bright red. come here, little girl...!" so i did what all good students and scholars do when they have no idea how to go on with their papers, careers and lives: i cleaned the bathroom. i cleaned blue tile for blue tile. i cleaned it to kingdom come. i cleaned the tub, the sink, the floor, the walls. now i'm burned out and if i'm lucky i don't have the energy to get into a panic tonight. but i know that i will tomorrow.
[august 18, 2004 - ]
beautiful
weather. tried to repair my bike. it worked for 20 minutes, then the tire
was flat again. brought it to a professional bike shop. wish i was rich.
x. redecorated her apartment. which took her two days. i think redecorating
is on the work-avoidance-strategies-chart in the top five. but it looks
nice now. more space. more light. i bought myself an electric tooth brush
[you see: important things have happened!] and bernd is back from his holidays.
i have not only finished the power-point presentation for olomouc but also
my short description of the network sub-project. it's not perfect yet and
maybe i'll ask bernd and thomas to check it. now i'm sitting in the office,
desk more or less empty, it's too early to prepare next semester's seminar
yet, i've done all the urgent work and the hollow earth article are on
nicole and nina's desks. a mild breeze is waving through the office and
there's no one who could disturb me starting to finally write seriously
on the dissertation. i could open a document now and start typing page
after page... how i have dreaded this moment!
[august 20, 2004 . pling plong pling plong pling plong plung plong]listening to sigur ros' "ba ba" on repeat. sounds as if someone had given philip glass a glockenspiel as a christmas present. yesterday evening x. and i went for a long walk along the rhine. before, i had written an entire page for the diss. however mostly stuff that was sort of pointless. i'm not quite sure where i'm heading and what point i would like to make. right now it has started to rain again. which fits the music. i'm sitting in the office and i'm the only person working on the entire corridor. i'm homesick for x. and how she smells and how she feels like. i found 40 minutes of sound recording from 1966: cohen is reading from beautiful losers. great stuff! gave me gooseflesh! unfortunately the cafeteria is closed :o( i didn't really have a proper breakfast yet and i'm getting hungry slowly. bernd said that he liked the description of my materialities sub-project :o) this amused me: http://www.discountcatholicstore.com/kateri_tekakwitha.htm maybe i'll ask thomas to order something for me. i like the "Prayer Card with Medal". made a sort of drastic decision: i will get rid of my tv set. it just keeps distracting me too much and somehow i don't find the strength to resist the cheap thrill of being lulled to near-sleep by flickering, bright and colorful images. "getting rid" means as much as: store it in the office. it's secure here and when i change my mind i can always put it back into the apartment.
[august 24 - 2004 - auf der strasse denken leute 'wie sieht der denn aus?' / dass leute doof sind setz ich als bekannt voraus]
this
week-end i'll be off to olomouc. shudder! tried to continue working on
the forschungsstand but did it only halfheartedly. i have to make serious
decisions about the structure of my thesis! i have to have a structure!!!!
i can't just write into the blue! i need a clear path that i can follow.
this will make writing easier. now that i have a quiet office and the laptop
and all the ideas from the cohen-seminar and the coffee machine next door
i could - if i had a structure - really manage to put down a couple of
pages. another thing that depresses me: i'm fat! and worse than that: i'm
misshapen. i'm as misshapen as my thesis. we both need structure. the thesis
needs to gain weight and i need to lose it-. so i decided not to eat anymore.
i will only drink coffee and water. very healthy decision that is, too.
it's stormy outside. occasional sunshine and occasional showers. i bought
two new louvers for my kitchen and study window on saturday! looks good.
managed to fix them on the wall without too much fuss. last week x. and
i went for a long walk along the rhine, which was nice. i made a couple
of photos then of the sun going down behind the city for paula. let me
close today's entry with a random quotation from deleuze's difference
& repetition: "Thunderbolts explode between different intensities,
but they are preceded by an invisible, imperceptible dark precursor, which
determines their path in advance but in reverse, as though intagliated.
Likewise, every system contains its dark precursor which ensures the communication
of peripheral series."
[august 26, 2004 - i walked into a hosital where none was sick and none was well...]two days before olomouc. today bernd talked all day long about drinking beer all day long in olomouc. made a new structure for the diss yestreday. first i talked to x. in the morning, discussing my problems and discussing what i'm planning to do, and then when i got to the office i sat down and made a two page outline. which is good. it looks like a plan now.