A Thousand Plateaus

from last night: 

the moment i sit down, eva cassidy is singing “kathy’s song”. i start working and in the middle of the page that i’m revising the candle dies, flickers, stumbles and retreats with a sigh into a faint glowing that fades into smoke. the writing fades with it. i look up, nod over to the counter and ask you in a low voice:
“excuse me, do you have another candle for me? please?”
and you come over to the dark table, and when you hand me the light our hands touch. yours are warm, as usual. in fact (if you allow me the predictable melodramatic expression) they’re warmer than anything i can remember.
and then you say something that really makes me angry:
“is anything the matter?” you’re asking.
“what?”
“you look bitter and miserable. you’re not smiling the way you usually do…”
what the hell am i supposed to say to THAT!?? is it possible that you haven’t understood a single fucking thing!? when i came in and sat down you stood next to me out of nowhere, taking my order, and with your hands you fanned the air to your face and said:
“hm, that sweet smell. you always smell so good…” is it any wonder that i’m bitter and feeling fooled when you say things like that. do you ever *think* about anything you say or how it will be perceived and understood by other people??

FUCK YOU CANNOT EVEN BEGIN TO FATHOM HOW MUCH I’M MISSING YOU!

having easily shifted the signified under the signifier. another you, a worse feeling. first i stumbled over old pictures of you and now lamb’s “gabriel” is playing. “when this you see / remember me” checking the address book of my mobile phone and and there’s a gap between “samuel” and “sebastian” as if a teeth was missing, a disfigured smile, i curse the day i deleted it, then i praise it then i curse it again. the church and the rest of the city has disappeared behind the mirror-image of you (the other you now again) cleaning the bar in the windows. the moon looks like a bitten wafer. “and i swear i would have called you if i was sure you were alone”.

seeking comfort in the american beauty soundtrack and the ‘needle passage’. “we are part of a necklace of incomparable beauty and unmeaning…” still seeking. “all the polarities, things in their images and things which cast no shadow. a house and a toothache, and i myself, my greedy fantasies, everything which has existed and does exist…” why “seems”? why “seems”? why “my mind SEEMS to go out on a path…”? why so hesitant, leonard? why so careful? why not going ALL the way? why not admitting to the truth instead of staying caught in smilies and weak allusion?

N E X T   D A Y :

okay, there’s really no point in trying to put down what course the night took. but i ended up lying in bed, wondering how one could ever fall out of love that fast! i mean, give me a break. in just little under 30 minutes you completely deconstructed yourself. that was quite a show! so when i paid you pointed at my coat again:
“funny…” you said “i got the same button, mr. grumpy. are there any concerts in the near future?”
the question surprises me because there’s a poster for the gig tonight hanging in the café.
“well, tomorrow night in duisburg…”
“have you ever written a song about the café?”
i’m laughing:
“yes, i have.”
“you really have to give me a cd someday!”
listen, stupid! if you would ever have checked out the website which is on the button that – as you don’t get tired mentioning – is sticking on your bag you’d have found out that you can download all the songs there.

halfway home my steps get slower and slower and suddenly i find myself standing on the sidewalk, thinking that i might as well return and tell you that i really can’t understand your behavior. astonished by my own courage i walk into the café – which is empty by now – and lean on the counter.
“you wanna know why i was in a bad mood tonight? because somehow your behavior irritates me.”
“what do you mean? which behavior?”
“your remarks and your gestures.”
“which remarks?”
“like the one this night. don’t you ever think about how people might understand or perceive what you’re saying?”
you’re looking at me with big, innocent bambi-eyes.
“i’m just trying to be friendly!”
“well, i think it’s more than friendly when you tell someone that he smells good.”
“really?”
“yes, and it kind of irritates me after the things that have happened this summer” and the moment i have uttered the last sentence i realize how stupid this sounds. ‘the things that have happened this summer’ – how melodramatic! this summer was characterized by the things that *didn’t* happen.
“so you think i’m behaving wrongly?” and your movements stop being smooth and wavelike and become fragmented and aggressive. you wipe the counter in hard, fast strokes.
“no, it’s not a matter of right or wrong…”
“i’m just trying to be friendly, but if you don’t think that this is appropriate i can also limit the conversation to ‘what would you like to drink?’…” and your black eyes are blinking angrily at me. i don’t understand why you’re so upset suddenly.
“wow! you can get really angry!” and i think it’s the first time that i talk to you and that i do not have the impression that you’re still in acting class. and i don’t like what i see.
“i mean can’t you understand that i’m feeling kind of … hm … taken for a fool when you make remarks like that or touch my neck?”
but no, you didn’t understand. you’re just being friendly and you would say this to any other guest. which implies : i’m just like any other guest to you. which is fine with me. but what really pisses me off this moment is that you never had the guts to tell me, to be honest. to say: ‘listen, don’t get overexcited’ instead you said ‘i feel like kissing you’ just two months ago. either you’re into some kind of strange game in which you consciously keep me at arm’s length while pulling me to you at the same time, or you’re hopelessly naive. obviously i didn’t tell you all this.
“listen, mr. p.” and your voice has lost all its softness “*you* are coming here even though you know that i am working and quite frankly i don’t want to think about what i’m saying or how i’m saying it…”
so, you don’t. you don’t think it’s necessary to think about how in certain contexts certain things sound to certain people? you care about them *that* much that you don’t want to think about it?
“…and, really, i find this whole conversation utterly stupid! i mean this is a conversation i would have with someone i’ve had a relationship with… and we’ve been standing here, discussing this for over half an hour!” and you fix me angrily and i still can’t understand what nerve i hit that makes you go off like that and with your last remark i hear a clamor and a clatter and something is cracking and coming apart. and a number of names for you pass through my head but they soon vanish and all that is left is a little disappointment and a faint sigh of resignation in the face of what seems to be a coupling of immaturity and self-absorption.
“anyway” i’m saying, “i still wish you a good night”
“whatever” you mumble, your face turned away.
when i step onto the sidewalk i take a deep, free breath.

couldn’t really sleep at all. rolled from one side to the other, thinking that, at least to me, what you said showed that you didn’t have the slightest respect or interest in what i’ve been feeling. that maybe all this just *was* about you being adored, about collecting the attention of people. and maybe you reacted so explosively because you’re somehow aware of that. your personality is the exact opposite from what you radiate as a haecceity. i thought you had both: charm and character. but after last night i’m not even sure about the first anymore. with your black, fiery eyes you became the magician of your own disenchantment. and the one thing i was sure about was that i’m not really willing to waste any attention (either emotional nor intellectual) to someone behaving the way you do.

maybe writing all this is really mean, and i hope you’ll never stumble upon this because it will probably make you furious. but then i was furious last night, realizing that all that’s left when i’m thinking about you is the bitter feeling of having been played with and taken for a fool. and the shame that i disregarded my dignity like that and let it happen to me.

not much to report. tiresome day. seminar went okay. met d. in the late afternoon. we had a coffee and then sex. felt good to be emotionally detached for once. am too much involved lately. when i walked home i passed the café, a warm light came shining onto the sidewalk from inside and through the man-sized glass panes i saw victoria standing behind the counter, her silhouette familiar and threatening, like a doll that looks uncannily alive in a shop window. i walked on home. now : gym.

can’t get over the “magic” passage of Beautiful Losers :
“…But Magic would not tarry. It moves from arm to arm. It would not stay with them. Magic is afoot. It cannot come to harm. It rests in an empty palm. It spawns in an empty mind. But Magic is no instrument. Magic is the end.”

had sort of an idea when i was listening to glass while using the “magic is alive” passage from Beautiful Losers. here’s the predictable result.

sunday is couple day. gorgeous, interesting women sitting at the café, having brunch with thick, uninteresting men, most of them look like aspiring architects and are dressed following a mean sportfreunde-stiller hetero aesthetic. the weather is still mild (in contrast to my mind) and the clouds are whipped forth by the sunlight, as if the rays were pushing them across the sky, dispersing them along illuminated force lines. on the pointy roof of the church birds are gathering and a crescent moon is rising slowly. sort of finished the language sub-chapter, but the feeling of satisfaction is entirely lacking. been to the gym in the morning. still need to prepare the session on tuesday. am hungry everywhere. in my ear the slowly and stoically descending organ chords of “koyaanisqatsi” that carefully transform themselves into a melody. jhz jhviu kdrr 6ecvb kkdik, loiegb : löpiouUz – klo0&e$sh bdhs iuqwqe dund js”" fggdjb! hfjru! jdert! oirg! nbdkoi. mloehasd.

the tea-leaves are slowly coloring the transparent water, like one had dipped a chinese brush filled with paint into the cup and the color is fleeing out of the fine hair and streaming into the water like a breath. i’m sitting by the window of the café and my playlist is playing. yes, you’ve read right : *my* playlist. yesterday night when i came in jodie pointed at my mp3 player and asked me : “are there any good songs on this?” and she took it and added almost one gigabyte of mp3s to the maifeld itunes library. i warned her, though, that some of the songs might not be really background café music pieces. she just shrugged her shoulders and said: “i bet my ass that they’re still better than most of the crap on this computer! and that is a *pretty* large stake!”

went to meet a friend of mine yesterday night whom i hadn’t seen for a couple of weeks. she’s had severe health problems, but she’s better now. i started out with soft drinks, but the more she asked me : “so what about you? how’s your life coming along?” the more alcohol i needed. so at half past one when i was on my way home i passed the café and dropped in and jodie was just closing the place and we had another beer and talked about our childhood in bielefeld (she’s about my age and we come from the same city) and then she invited me for dinner on monday and i ended up home at five in the morning. after four hours of sleep i woke up nervous and restless, and it dawned on me that chances were pretty good that you might be working this afternoon, so i got dressed and stumbled through my apartment and packed my things and came here to continue writing on the half-page that i composed during the four hours that i’d been sitting here yesterday afternoon. half a page in four hours! and i was concentrated and the only time i was distracted was when i was discussing with victoria catholic eucharistic rites (she’s studying religious sciences as a minor subject) which i need for my chapter. she said that i should check the second letter to the corinthians, and that’s why i’m sitting here with the bible now while one of my favorite blumfeld songs is playing : “ich – wie es wirklich war”. of course you’re not working, and it’s better this way.

“It is not the spiritual that comes first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man is of the dust of the earth; the second man is from heaven.” first letter to the corintheans, 15:46-48.

felt sick the entire day. not enough sleep. to many poisonous substances, alcohol and sugar, listened all day long to the closing chapter of the koyaanisqatsi dvd. that didn’t cheer me up. it’s gotten warmer again, almost spring like. played the set for the gig in duisburg next week. worked okay. paula wrote and sent a photo of her and brandi. she’s laughing, and i think i’ve never seen her that happy. her entire face has changed. she wrote: “i’m really happy you’re getting gigs! come play one in vermillion! i know just the venue: open mike’s. it’s perfect for you.” that would be so great! visiting paula and playing a series of gigs in the states

paula wrote : “what goes on with the schlmiel? (that’s jewish for idiot. you know which one i mean.)” and she asked if you were still torturing me and said that you should get your head on right and take a good look at me. then you’d see what you’re missing and scoop me up in your arms and kiss me from now till new year’s. “well, a girl can hope” she ended.

mood-o-meter: 0.6.

and here’s you :

okay, my family is officially getting interesting : talked to my mother on the phone the other night and she mentioned that my aunt is in a mental asylum. life keeps getting more bizarre.

met with jamie last night in celebration of astrid, a mutual friend, who had given a talk at a melville convention in new york last week. before i went to the café and prepared next weeks session. you were there, and i realized that all this has gotten beyond control : you’re touching things that seem to be me, but then they’re not. difficult to describe. but i had ice cold fingers, really, ice cold, while my chest was burning hot and the sweat was running down my back. i was standing in the desert and in an ice storm at the same time. that’s what you’re doing to me.

and then, when i payed, you said:
“oh, you’re leaving already”
and i knew the moment i opened my mouth that weird things would come out. only stuttering and stupid things. i think i occasionally can be witty and funny and participate in an intelligent conversation. but each time i’m talking to you i’m just saying totally absurd things, and i don’t recognize myself. that is the weirdest part : that i’m so aware of myself in your presence (of my emotions and my body acting out of control) while i’m simultaneously not even remotely what i usually am.
so i answered:
“well, i’m meeting a friend and we’ll have a cocktail because another friend has given a talk in new york…”
“and you’re celebrating that she’s away?” you’re joking and i reply
“no, this we did the last four night. tonight we celebrate that her talk went well…”

and then i leave and you’re with me the entire night while i’m talking to jamie, even when we’re discussing totally different problems (and there were lots of them to discuss - poor jamie, she really had to listen to a lot of complaints and wailing!) and then, on my way back home i passed the café, and it was not even midnight, so i went in, and it might have been the poor lighting and the two mochitos that i had, but i think your face is brightening up, and you smile, and i have another peppermint tea and read two more chapters of gatsby and make notes, and then, when i leave the café is almost empty and you lean by the counter and i know that this would be the perfect moment to push my luck, to challenge fate and to do something that you could not answer by an ambiguous gesture, but then you pull out a postcard from under the bar and say:
“hey, mr p., sebastian wrote from berlin” and you hand it to me.
it’s short, only reads: hey folks! greetings from the capital. shooting will take longer than expected. more soon! sebastian.
and this throws me off the track, and you’re saying something funny, and i can’t answer appropriately, only stutter something unintelligible, pay and leave and when i’m passing the windows i look back, and you look and i felt like turning around because i knew that such a perfect moment will not come again : you relaxed, the night rainy and mild, the café empty, i drunk but not too drunk yet desperate enough to mistake my state with courage. but i walk on home. couldn’t sleep. couldn’t get you out of my mind. had weird, bad dreams, woke up tired and depressed.

by the time i got home in the evening from the university i was dead tired. went to the gym anyways. after that i was beyond tired, walking around like a zombie. it was only nine, and since i couldn’t sleep yet i packed my things and went to the café. sat there, staring into the screen most of the time, then closed the ibook, joined jodie at the counter who was brooding over a soduko (or is it sudoku?) riddle. she wasn’t working, but caro was, and jodie was there to keep her company. we talked, exchanged sighs, were silly, jodie went home, i had another tea and just when i’m about to leave so i’ll get to bed early to rise and shine tomorrow victoria enters, sits next to me, lights a cigarette, orders a beer and i’m staying. we talk about rousseau and orgiastic feasts and suddenly it’s so late that caro is about to close the place. victoria puts on her coat, i put on mine, and by coincidence or intention we both leave together, saying good-night in front of the café.
she stretches out her hand, it is warm, and she pulls me to her softly, unnoticeably, undecideably - it might have been gravity only. says:
“why don’t you come to write on your thesis tomorrow morning when i’m working?”
what i didn’t say:
“i had no difficulties drinking no beer tonight, but i think i’ll have difficulties letting go of your hand…”

it was after ten when i leaned back, body aching from the gym. it was pitch dark outside and the radiator was gurgling. there was music playing and the pc was humming and jamie had just mailed and asked me whether i wanted to have a drink with her tomorrow night. and still i couldn’t stand my room, i was pacing up the walls, running around in circles. so i took my books and papers and went to the café to prepare next week’s seminar session on The Great Gatsby.

when i entered, jodie was already standing by the door, holding a cup of green tea.
“for me?” i asked and she just smiled warmly and nodded, balancing the cup on a small plate that was filled with cookies and i felt like i never wanted to leave this place again. now fleetwood mac are playing and the sugar crystals are dissolving completely in the hot tea, whirling around faster and faster until they disappear like in a magic trick, transforming from being sensational to the eye to being sensational to the tongue. people’s voices blur into a murmur and a memory of you balancing trays between the tables is with me.

i’m imagining jodie’s and my conversation in two hours time when she’s about to close the place and i’ve moved from my table in the corner to having a last tea at the counter.
“you know…” i’ll say, “i’ve been here last wednesday when you-know-who was working.”
she’ll turn her head slightly to give me that look that has a sigh in it, without stopping to polish the glasses.
“you did?” she’ll ask and her voice will remind me of princess superstar’s in those moments when she knew more than i did, when i was listening to her small sigh on the phone and i knew there was something she wanted to tell me but didn’t dare. and only after i had repeatedly insisted “what is it?” she’d say: “you know, s. has asked me to go out with her this week-end…”
“you did?” jodie will ask and even though i’ll know that it’s much better for me to change the topic i’ll still go on, like a lemming running up the cliff.
“yes – and i’m thinking of being here tomorrow night, too…”
she won’t say anything. small sigh.
“what is it?”
“dunno…”
“what is it, jodie?”
“maybe you better don’t come tomorrow night.”
“why?” and this question is merely rhetorical. i know the answer. it’s an answer that i have expected much sooner, weeks ago already. still out of some masochistic impulse i want to hear her saying it.
“because it’ll be you-know-who’s birthday. and he will be here…”
“who’s ‘he’?” paving the way for the canon ball to hit my stomach and even before she’s saying the three word-answer a bitter ball is exploding within my chest.
“the new boyfriend.”
the sound of wind storming through the café, i’m only gradually realizing that it’s the rushing of blood in my ears.
“i’m sorry” she will say.
“it’s okay” i will lie.

“small lies, tiny heart, your journey has worn you out…” syd matters is singing, only accompanied by a simple, waltzing guitar. so beautiful. great chords and very melancholic melody progression until, in the middle of the song, a muted brass section sets in. i’m sitting in this movie set with my stinking thesis and a hot peppermint tea that i’ve sugared way too much. the light is warm here, and there are just enough people around so that i don’t feel too lonely and they don’t make too much noise. i could sit here for the next three hours, lost in the song and my unspecific and unordered thoughts. “slow down, need a rest. we’ll settle around your nest, i thought i could be your guest for a while…“

later

oh fuck. spent the past hours trying to unravel the reciprocal relations between prayer (“prayer is translation”), magic (“magic is desire. desire changes the world”), translation (“phrase book on my knees I beseech the Virgin everywhere”, translation is to language as transformation is to the body) and transformation (“the Body of the Savior in His Viatique Change, the Wafer Disguise” – the transformation of christ’s body is connected to magic (hocus pocus) and therefore to a (mis)translation) in Beautiful Losers. they are all connected to metamorphosis but when i tried to make a diagram the result was a bloody rhizome where every point was connected to every other point without creating a whole. fuck. how the hell do you turn rhizomatic relations into a logical argument? fat chance!

“O God, I grow silent as I hear myself begin to pray:
AT THE DRUG – SHOP
Please, get this mebical [sic]
    prescription ready for
    me
please, call after twenty
minutes. It will be re-
    ady.
I shall be waiting. Ne-
    ver mind!
How must I take this
    medicine?
In the morning, at noon
    and in the evening
before the meal
after the meal…”

emersonian evening. slept until noon because i was at bernd’s birthday party last night and returned only at three this morning. by the end of the night i found myself dancing to east-european brass polka music. went to the gym today, ate and now i’m, well, guess where. it’s quiet and uncrowded and i’m in a very strange mood. the stereo played a great song the other minute that i didn’t know and it almost made me stuff the papers into my bag, rush home and write a song. it was only the fact that writing a song is even more difficult than preparing a session or adding paragraphs to my thesis that made me think twice. so i’m still sitting here, marveling at emerson’s “the poet”

“What we call nature is a certain self-regulated motion or change; and nature does all things by her own hands, and does not leave another to baptize her but baptizes herself; and this through the metamorphosis again [...] The expression is organic, or the new type which things themselves take when liberated.”

listened a lot to heather nova’s “not only human” because i used a drum sample from the song for the 200 lurkers cover of “kathy’s song”. it’s very, hm, complex in that it weaves quite a number of sound levels, acoustic and electric, without being over-produced. i like the words, too.

life is something set to music
i can hear it when i’m sad
there’s a chord in every muscle
every kiss you ever had
there’s a power when you’re near me
in our heads or in our bones
i know nothing
but i’m guessing
when we die
we’re not alone
maybe there’s a light that’s always on
maybe we’re not only human

finished emerson. when a poet is someone who can make the forgotten beauty of the world shine through even the smallest and seemingly most insignificant object, then you must be a poet because everything seems beautiful and electric when you’re near. my organization becomes finer, my perception sharper. perhaps because i’m far from equilibrium and therefore easier to stir and trigger.

“…whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings and attempt to write them down [...] The sea, the mountain-ridge, Niagara, and every flower-bed, pre-exist, or super-exist, in pre-cantations, which sail like odors in the air, and when any man goes by with an ear sufficiently fine, he overhears them and endeavors to write down the notes without diluting or depraving them.”

oh well, anyway, it’s almost ten and i’m dead tired. another week-end that was nothing like a rest or recreation. the new week starts in a couple of hours. got a weird ache from shaking my head back and forth and left and right to get you out of my mind. didn’t work, obviously.

“It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself), by abandonment to the nature of things; that beside his privacy of power on which he can draw, by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him; then he is caught up into the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and his words are universally intelligible as the plants and animals.”