A Thousand Plateaus

Never

Driving home today, the smoke from
a farmer’s field spread out over the highway
until it lifted like fog does suddenly, like fingers.
A few minutes later, at dusk, I looked up in the sky
at the contrail of a jet, which looked like a hot pink
butane lighter flame, ready to set alight
my life with you.
I would take your bones and fold
them over, one by one; since I can’t
see you upright anymore, you are smaller
in my mind than you actually were. I have your
navy blue hooded sweatshirt, with its rips
and white paint stains, and I don’t know
how you fit into it: the sleeves barely
go down to my wrists, and you
were so tall. My father, ten years have slipped by
since your death and you are lost to me,
past miles and the markers of your life
traveling fast. Days are tumbling round
the baseline. The snowplow had to go up the alley
before the ambulance. I think of myself as
constantly in the darkness. You are not
an angel, you are not sitting on my shoulder,
you are not in heaven. I don’t remember
if the day was clear. I don’t remember your coffin
poised over its hole. I remember the priest’s shoes
and the crumpled-up kleenex in my sister’s
hand. Today and all days I look for you
everywhere: in the eternal groaning of the body,
in the flapping drafts of my unfinished thoughts,
in the phonelines, in the powerlines, in the shadow
of your hands on a map, in the hall-light on my
pillowcase, in the places where the wind whips and ends,
where these words stop. The windiness of evening,
oh what difference could I have made,
even if I had said your name,
your stitched body in the first miles of night,
and the wet and warm at the zero of the heart,
beating its little song:
up, go.

- paula kostel

from a mail to paula:

there's a clear halfmoon above the church, its light coming down through the branches, and they don't have much to put up against it because they're bare and bony. it has been a clear, sunny autumn day, but now it has gotten chilly and i have to zip up my sweater even in the cafe. the curbs are cushioned with brown leaves that line the avenues. it's not even eight but it feels like way past midnight. i'm beyond miserable, the predictable post-performance depression on my shoulders like long wet hair, sending waves of cold down the back. i'm listening to the new cd by james yorkston : warm, calm, acoustic, effortless music. everything i'm not. i'm restless. that's the bad part. wish i could just go home and lie down and sleep, because i'm tired as well. but there is this longing driving me to do ... what? so many things at the same time : run away. find a home. write a song. find someone to be with. run and find someone to be with.

the concert yesterday night went okay - in fact *i* think it went great. i had the hell of a good time and i'd do it each night if i had the chance. unfortunately not a lot of people showed up. about 40, judging from the ticket sales, and since i had to pay the sound-guy and the girl selling the tickets plus a taxi to the venue and back home i ended up paying 50 euro instead of getting any money. well, it was worth it anyway. even though we didn't really have the time to rehearse, bernd and daniel (who played the glockenspiel and chimes in a couple of songs) sort of intuitively played during the right parts of the songs, and as visual support (and because i figured that people might be grateful not to have to look at me the entire evening) i had some slidesfilms that were projected against the wall in my back. but the bummer was that --- wasn't there. this really was a let down. --- is walking around with a 200 lurkers pin on the bag (this i saw with my own eyes just a couple of days ago) and i had given --- an invitation some weeks ago, but --- didn't turn up. yes, you're right : ---'s a fucker. but i long for ----. not for ---, but for ---'s eyes and ---'s gaze and the way --- moves and the way everything feels warm and brighter and more intense when ---'s around. fuck.

"could you want her, could you need her, more than i? more than i?" yorkston is singing, and he's asking this so lightheartedly, picking the strings with an incredible ease. paula, i want to write a good song again. i want to find someone to be with. i know this sounds silly. the restlessness is coupled to the feeling of wasting my life. not just my life – which is way too abstract – but this very night, this very hour. i'm tired from the trouble and i want to sleep more. i want to be calmer. i can't recall the last time i felt at peace and the last time i felt at peace i don't want to remember because it is filled with smells of hair and skin alien to me now. i love your new poem. i want to quote it in the online journal, if this is okay with you. i, too, am wearing a navy blue sweater tonight, but it has so many holes and is ripped at the side that the wind is coming through it and i'm wondering : chilly wind in the cafe? but here it comes and it whips and ends. i'm looking up into the sky so often these days. it seems to be my favorite direction. as if my gaze was drawn there, maybe because it is something that unites us, watching the clouds and then the sun set and then the moon rise and then the stars turn and sometimes the sun rise again. unites not only you and me but her and me and him and me and where else could you possibly be if not up there since you're definitely not down here, you're definitely not down here. and i've lost track of whom i'm talking to. the only point of this rambling is to fantasies a presence. i wish you would slip under this sweater with me, in a silly moment, hold the creaking seams together with both hands, and laugh into my face, bound to me by the soft cotton.

and then on my way home i stopped at the grill and got myself a double extra large serving of french fries. and now i'm sick.

after the concert. still got the last song in my head. my mind's distracted and diffused, my thoughts are many miles away. knew before that gigs won't change anything, a knowledge again proven (by) this night.

won against the crabs and fought the rest of the day against dead birds. no, you don't have to understand that. went to the gym. played a couple of songs. prepared the seminar. little social interaction. i'm tired now. still got quite a number of things to do tomorrow: i have to pack all the equipment and i'm a bit worried about connecting the laptop to the pa at the blue shell. i hope i/they have the right cables.

but these are just minor details. don't really have anything important to report.

it's one at night and i've just returned from the café where i have been fighting with crabs for four full hours! sigh. and it's not even clear who has won yet. gonna continue tomorrow. told jodie to have a bon voyage. she's flying to new york in five hours. nevertheless she was working and when she'll come back on thursday afternoon she'll also be working in the evening. that woman's got some energy!

rehearsed the set this afternoon, which went well. talked to elaine on the phone: she was more worried about how the gig is going to work out than i am. "i'll be feeling embarrassed when you're hitting a wrong note!" she cried out. and yesterday thomas and princess superstar gave me professional performer's tips such as "don't close your eyes under any circumstances when you're singing. it's overdramatizing!" and thomas added "yes, and you're not richard ashcroft anyways!" and it sounded so ... s t u p i d  because the last thing i'll be concerned about is what kind of pose i have! when i'm simultaneously trying to play the right chords, hit the right strings, sing the right words, play along to the samples, sing in tune, try to have the right volume that matches the play-back from the laptop, play the right tempo for the background films and pray that daniel and bernd will set in at the right points (because we won't have any time to rehearse) i don't really have any part of my brain left to be concerned with how i'm looking! jesus! if i'd be doing this for vanity i'd be concentrating on my academic carreer instead and become a professor.

tiresome day. lots of organizing, looking at computer-screens absent mindedly and repressing. now i'm sitting in front of the text for tomorrow's colloquium session, and the letters dance little, defiant jigs on the page. feels like i have to nail them down one by one. but of course this would make a martyr of the text and you can't have this! as usual my room keeps shrinking. wish i could take the text to the café and read it there, but that wouldn't be a good idea. a friend of mine has to put up with her friend's little son whom she is babysitting for a week. unfortunately he is currently going through puberty and he's a real pain in the ass: he won't listen, keeps talking back and just storms through the apartment carelessly, leaving a mess of broken things in each room. she's picking up after him all day long. i know why i don't like children! actually we wanted to go to the movies tonight, but since she cannot leave him unattended she canceled the date.

hm, sometimes i wish i was more into drugs. guess this is a good drug night. "there is a frog in south america whose venom is a cure for all the sufferings that mankind must endure." usually each day has some kind of flicker of joy. sometimes it's very short, sometimes it's longer. sometimes it's just the brief moment a warm wind needs to mess up my hair or the time the very last ray of light needs to pierce my eye before the sun descends into the belfry of the church by the café. sometimes it's as long as a whole chorus or the time i share air, space, temperature, sounds, pressure with someone who makes me perceive these things more intensely (=love?). but today, there wasn't much flickering going on. i do know why i don't want to know *any*thing about people i can't be together with. the more i know the greater the gravity that distracts and attracts my thoughts. and currently i know too much already. guess all this could have been said much shorter, as in the dialog from seinfeld when elaine is at a party (on the verge of getting drunk) and a guy introduces himself to her:
"hi, i'm eric!"
"hi, i'm miserable."

22:22 as i start writing this. long day. the seminar went okay, even though it's way too crowded. out of the 90 students ten are participating actively and regularly - which is good. we talked about poe's "philosophy of composition" which is a great text to discuss in class.

when i came home in the late afternoon i went shopping and filled the fridge, played some songs from the blue shell set and then, just as i had sat down on the desk, i had this compulsive idea to go to the gym. i really struggled with myself because i was sooo tired and worn out, and actually all i wanted was stretch out on the bed, close my eyes and drift away to a quiet laurie anderson song. i don't know why, but i got up and went working out - which was quite an effort.

when i came back home i did what esther greenwood would have done in the bell jar: "Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: 'I'll go take a hot bath.'" and i leave it up to you to decide whether she wanted to invoke the opening paragraph of moby dick here.

sorry, but i don't really have anything exciting to report. 22:41 as i stop writing this.

it's raining cats and dogs. the drops are crashing onto the banister of the balcony with irregular regularity. soothing. listening to paul simon's "quiet" on repeat. my eyes ache from looking onto screens all day long. finished a subchapter of the beautiful losers discussion tonight - but it isn't really any good. too fuzzy. too i-don't-know-where-this-is-going. more and stronger rain. there was a time when i was sitting at the café, the work was flowing, the warm wind was blowing through the room "and then something else..." and i couldn't think of any place in the world i'd rather be. but tonight i felt oddly out of place. rain so strong that i can hardly see the houses across the backyard.

and when they say that you're not good enough, well the answer is: you're not. 

actually i had planned to spend a night full of work at the café. had the three disquieting muses with me: poe (seminar preparations), buchanan (colloquium preparations) and cohen (thesis). just when i had finished poe, jodie came over to my table.
"want anything else to drink?"
"a coke please. i didn't know you were working tonight..."
"well, i have to earn some money. i'm planning to take a short trip to new york next week-end."
"get out! really?"
"yep - that's why i can't be at the 200 lurkers concert, unfortunately."
"oh. that's a shame."
a moment later she was bringing the coke.
"you do know that the little bugger is on night shift in..." and she checks her watch "...about ten minutes, don't you?"
"oops!" i finished my coke, paid and left.

when i came home it was disturbingly quiet. i unpacked the texts but couldn't concentrate. rehearsed the set for next week. felt funny and restless. felt like going to the gym but i had been there this morning.  wrote a couple of mails. then i tried

it's five in the morning. i've just returned home. actually i only wanted to ave a beer with jodie who was working at the café tonight. but then we ended up talking about the world, relationships and whathaveyou until ten minutes ago. we walked home (we've got the same way home because she's practically a neighbor of mine) and i think we were both happy to be not walking home alone.

when i entered the café this afternoon sebastian was standing behind the counter. i was dumbstruck. i thought he still was in berlin, filming whatever film he's in. he was smiling at me from behind the counter. i didn't know what to do: step forward or turn around and leave. i stepped forward. "hi!". "hello!". i sat down, started to work but couldn't really concentrate. sweat running down my arms. my brain nervous and restless. fuck.
"long time no see" awkward smile on both our faces.
"what can i get you?"
"a coke, please. thought you were in berlin..."
"i am. i'm just back for this week-end. and victoria is ill so i agreed to take over her shift."
"i see." i said, not looking at him, faking disinterest, playing cool, pressing random keys on the macbook which protests with bleeping noises and alert windows. during the two hours in which we're sharing the same room i'm not looking at him once. when he's leaving he's coming over to my table.
"hey phil. you have a gum by any chance?"
"nope - sorry."
"well, have a nice week-end anyway. i'm off now."
"bye."
"bye."
fuck.