A Thousand Plateaus

so, it's the last day of 2006. and not a moment too soon. no, that's not quite right. wish the year had two or three more months. it flew by so quickly again, if you forgive me the platitude.

i'm going to spend tonight with jamie, jenny and sharon at marla & her boyfriend's place. the usual suspect ;-) friday afternoon we already went shopping together and bought half the store's supply of food and liquor.

anyway, just wanted to pitch phoenix again. they're really great, much better than franz ferdinand or the strokes or any other of these show-off-rock bands. they're by far less retchingly pretentious and the songs are much more playful. a little bit like a french version of lotion. don't let yourself be fooled by the first tune: it's getting better! check out track 3, track 5 and track 8 here.

thought i might as well quote a couple of fitting lines from beautiful losers (give me a couple of weeks more and i'll have posted the entire novel piece by piece). btw, i never had a college romance with zelda either.

21.
Among the curious items I inherited from F. is a box of fireworks packed by Rich Brothers Fireworks Co., Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It contains 64 sparklers, eight 12- and 8-ball roman candles, large pinwheels, red and green fire cones, vesuvius fountains, golden jewel, silver cascade, oriental and radiant fountains, 6 giant parade sparklers, silver wheels, skyrockets, comets, handle lawn fountains, snakes, torches, red white and blue cones. I wept as I unpacked the pieces, wept for the American boyhood I never had, for my invisible New England parents, for a long green lawn and an iron deer, for college romance with Zelda.
22.
I am frightened and alone. I lit one of the snakes. From the little cone a writhing ribbon of gray ash bubbled in coils on a corner of the yellow table until all the cone was consumed in its own extension-a hideous little pile of skin, gray and black like a blob of birdshit squeezed like icing. Carcasses! Carcasses! I want to swallow dynamite.

[from yesterday night]
sitting in the café, trying to work. find it hard to concentrate. jodie is working, and has just brought me a giant glass of mulled wine decorated with a slice of orange and about 20 cookies :-) guess i'll sit over by the bar and spend the rest of the evening talking to her. right now i just can't see the fucking thesis anymore. maybe i'll ask her about her new year's resolutions. thought a lot about last year, trying to figure out whether it has been a good or a bad year. some extraordinary things have happened: the concerts, the tv-appearance, being quoted in the süddeutsche. i made new friends at the café, lost others due to my careless writing. and then there are the extraordinary bad things, which i won't go into now. gonna join jodie now.

[from tonight]
sitting in the café, working, and it went really well. i was wide awake, concentrated and in something like 'high' spirits. and then, suddenly, this song came on: 'north' by a band called phoenix. a rolling, western rhythm. a simple bass line accentuating twos and fours. and two playful electric guitars, one slightly distorted, one a clean underwater guitar. and these instruments were improvising for five straight minutes – not unlike the famous nerve bible improvisation that lead to 'cold smoke'. and suddenly everything that i was thinking about cohen & deleuze, everything that had occupied my mind tonight, vanished, and the only thing that became important was this song, which rolled on and on and on. not the thesis, not my job, not my hunger, not the weather, not the stone my heart has become, not my overextended intellect, not the question what i'll wear tomorrow but only the music and the wish to make such music. the only thing that ever mattered and that will ever matter: writing songs as this one that give you the final push when you're standing on top of the snow covered hill, trying to balance on your skiers, still contemplating whether to speed down or not – and then suddenly the music tips you ever so slightly and before you know it you are flying down the hill without any chance or desire to control where you're going, the wind's stinging mixing with the anticipated hurt of the inevitable crash.

it's noon, and punctual with the ringing of the church bells i'm sitting down in the café. dido is singing. 21st century muzak. von mir aus. here, too, all the lights are on and from the streets the peculiar sound of car-tires on wet asphalt is waving in. realized that it is not just the absence of love. there is a difference between something that is simply not there and something that is missing. it is a 'positive', negative emotion : an absence that is constantly tugging at your shirt, reminding you that it is there. i call it 'unlove'.

"O Father, Nameless and Free of Description, lead me from the Desert of the Possible. Too long I have dealt with Events. Too long I labored to become an Angel. I chased Miracles with a bag of Power to salt their wild Tails. I tried to create Grace to prove that Grace existed." (178)

and then – after gym and dinner – more hours working at the café, copypasting all the quotations that i need from Book Two. i think i have a general idea where the discussion will lead to, but that might just be wishful-thinking. met dirk (who owns the connection) and we fixed a date for the 200 lurkers gig there. february 3rd.

it's not even eleven in the morning and i already have to switch on the lights because it's so dark and rainy outside : between the years. one hand in the cookie jar, the other on the ibook. jose gonzales is singing and the great voice-and-guitar-only tunes remind me that i have to forget something. you know, on second thought i'm really disappointed with my life.

A man wakes up to the sound of rain
From a dream about his lovers
Who pass through his room.
They brush lightly by, these lovers.
They pass. Never touching.
These passing lovers move through his room.
The man is awake now
He can't get to sleep again.
So he repeats these words
Over and over again:
Bravery. Kindness. Clarity.
Honesty. Compassion. Generosity.
Bravery. Honesty. Dignity.
Clarity. Kindness. Compassion.
Bravery. Kindness. Clarity.
Honesty. Compassion. Generosity.
Bravery. Honesty. Dignity.
Clarity. Kindness. Compassion.
Bravery. Kindness. Clarity.
Honesty. Compassion. Generosity.
Bravery. Honesty. Dignity.
Clarity. Kindness. Compassion.
Bravery. Kindness. Clarity.
Honesty. Compassion. Generosity.
Bravery. Honesty. Dignity.
Clarity. Kindness. Compassion.

sitting in the café. a thin moon above the church, eva cassidy is singing. "but i miss you most of all / my darling / when autumn leaves start to fall" its quickly getting dark outside. here's another bad idea for you : shopping groceries after the x-mas holidays. they had all kinds of x-mas sweets for half the price piled up in the middle of the shop and naturally i loaded half of it into my cart.

started the discussion of book two of BL and came across the most beautiful description of striation:
"Men also give off a sound. [...] It is the very opposite of a hiss, the sound men make. It is Shhh, the sound made around the index finger raised to the lips. [...] Shhh, and the forests are cleared so the wind will not rattle the trees. [...] Will the animals stop howling, please. Will the belly stop rumbling, please. Will time call off its ultrasonic dogs, please. It is the sound my ball pen makes on the hospital paper as I run it down the edge of the red ruler. Shhh, it says to the billion unlines of whiteness. Shhh, it whispers to the white chaos, lie down in dormitory rows. Shhh, it implores the dancing molecules, I love dances but I do not love foreign dances, I love dances that have rules, my rules." (146-147)

i'm tired. why am i tired? why do i feel like walking around in a lead armor day after day after day. it's wednesday, but not the dreaded wednesday. dreaded wednesdays are over. i was a little surprised when, after i had sat down, victoria was standing in front of my table and not you (and it feels so inappropriate to waste the second person singular for you, but i figure for the few entries still to come about you i can afford it).
"hey" she said
"hi!" i returned
"hope you're not disappointed that *i* am working tonight...?"
"why would *that* disappoint me?"
"because wednesday nights --- is usually working..."
and of course i couldn't think of a witty or charming reply.

more beautiful quotations:
"Our love will never die, that I can promise you, I, who launch this letter like a kite among the winds of your desire." (153)

later, when she is bringing the beer i've ordered, she hisses:
"you know that you'll have to have a beer later at the bar with me!"
and the night takes a nicely orchestrated turn. at half past eleven i pack my things and walk up to the counter. victoria is polishing cutlery that she's fishing from a big bucket in front of her.
"if you have another cloth i can help you" i'm offering gentlemenlike. and she has. so why we're polishing knifes and forks we start to talk and she's telling me that she'll fly to australia for seven months in february.
"you know, my friend doesn't really love the idea..."
picking up the knife that i've just dropped i'm saying
"well, i bet he doesn't!"
"but then i'm thinking that if it's a healthy relationship - and i think that it is - it must 'survive' such a kind of temporary separation..."
"sure : 'good things never end'..." i'm quoting myself. and while i'm graping another fork the smiths are singing:
"so sleep and dream of love / because it's the closest you will get to love..."

and that's why i'm eating all the x-mas candy at once now.

spent yesterday and today at my parents'. returned tonight. this afternoon my mother had three little children and their two mothers over (it's a loooong story) and she and my dad ended up playing with them on the floor the entire afternoon while i had to make conversation with the two mothers over coffee. i so hope that my sister will eventually get a baby soon!

when i was on the train back home tonight i realized that i had forgotten the power-pack for the ibook at my parents'. bummer! i calculated for how many minutes the batteries would still work and decided that i definitely needed the pack as soon as possible. remembered that we had one in the office for the power-book, but that elaine might have taken it to aachen where she lives.

first thing i did when i got home was throwing my bag into the corner of the room, i graped gloves and cap and biked through subzero temperatures to the university. the humanities building was locked (thank god i have the keys to the front door!) and pitch dark : all the lights were out except for the dimly lit emergency exit-signs. so i stumbled up the stairs and to the office, opened the door and when the glistening neon lights flashed on i saw that there wasn't any power-pack anywhere on elaine's desk. 

my last hope was that it was in the locker with the apple video-adapters. and there i found it. PHEW! when i closed the locker i caught sight of my reflection in the dirty office window : a pathetic, hat-haired, red-nosed 'gestalt' standing in the office at 22:10 on december 25 in front of our little refrigerator on whose door was a large "biohazard" warning sign (because inside some uncanny mold-lifeform has been happily developing for the past three months) and i thought to myself : i need to get a life!

it's gonna be september now / for many years to come. nothing much to report.

got up. went to the gym, did the laundry, went to the café to work. there were only two other guests and victoria. after 5 minutes i received a text message from princess superstar asking me if i wanted to meet her this afternoon. she's got the flu and will fly off to spend xmas in canada tomorrow morning. so i depacked all my things : the ibook, the pens, the ruler, the copies and printouts and just when i was about to take my coat the theme music of american beauty started to play. and i went to the counter to pay and victoria stood there wiping her hands on the black apron and she was so ... physical ... and i nodded to the loudspeaker and said:
"that's a great tune!" and her eyes lit up and she answered:
"yes. but so very sad."

anyway, just wanted to wish you all a happy festivus!

i'm on the way to aachen cause we're having a sort of x-mas party at thomas's today. sitting on the train, listening to koyaanisqatsi. to spend the time usefully i get out my copy of two regimes of madness and start reading deleuze on drugs.

"With drugs there is something very unique where desire *directly invests the system of perception* [...] Hence the role of perception, the solicitation of perception in contemporary social systems, which led Phil Glass to say that drugs have in any case changed the problem of perception, even for non-users." (152)

and i wasn't even much surprised.

a more depressing afternoon you cannot imagine : it's cold and foggy and silent. everything's muted and still. the train passes dirty backyards of small villages, windows barred with wooden beams, fences torn down, fake plastic santa clauses climbing up balconies.

later :
back home. i'm not drunk enough. i'm not drunk enough. i'm too sober. i'm not drunk enough. did the most stupid thing! i knew, even before i did it, that it was such a stupid and bad idea. at one point during the evening i was at the bathroom in thomas's house and washing my hands i looked up and in the mirror i saw a collection of perfume bottles on a board behind me. i recognized one bottle immediately : it was by jean paul gaultier, the perfume s. used.

as i said : i knew beforehand that it was a bad idea. but against better judgment i took the bottle and pressed down the vaporizer and a hundredthousand molecules of memory filled the air and floated slowly onto my shirt and my skin and she was standing behind me and her presence was so intense that i had to hold on to the basin because my knees started to give in. the scent is still on my clothes, as if i had just returned from her and it feels as if the past two years hadn't happened at all. fuck. fuck. fuck. i knew it was a stupid idea. i'm not drunk enough

"i'm traveling in some vehicle, sitting in some café..." it's half past nine and bloody cold outside. a kind of damp coldness that sneaks up your pants, slips past the collar and down your chest. the café is comparatively empty and i've been working for almost three hours, digging through parts of the fourth chapter of anti-oedipus and revising the 45 pages i've written on Beautiful Losers so far.

"Why these words, paranoia and schizophrenia, which are like talking birds and girls' first names?" (279)

you are working, but i really do not mind anymore. and even playing all of the eva cassidy songs that you can find on the hard disk (which you are doing) won't change that. the only thing that is different from anybody else working is that i get overlooked constantly, but that's quite okay. realized that i haven't written to paula for over a month. guess i'll write a long mail when i'm staying at my parents's for christmas. there's not much else to do than working or writing mails anyway. we're usually running out of things to talk about after half an hour.

"But in reality, the unconscious belongs to the realm of physics; the body without organs and its intensities are not metaphors, but matter itself." (283)

i just text-messaged jamie. actually we wanted to meet tonight and work on our secret project. however, reality has by far surpassed everything we've come up with so far, so right now i'm feeling somehow at a loss to continue with it. anyway, here's the plan: in the best of possible worlds i might manage to write the section on book II of BL over christmas and new year's. which would leave the section on book III for the rest of january. and then i still have to write the concluding chapter and add the discussion of some of the poems here and there. so i might actually finish the rotten thing in spring. Or, as book III of BL starts: "Spring comes into Québec from the west. It is the warm Japan Current that brings the change of season to the west coast of Canada, and then the West Wind picks it up." a wind. a season. a time of the day. a perfect individuality lacking nothing.

"But we always make love with worlds [...] It is not through a desexualizing extension that the libido invests the large aggregates. On the contrary, it is through a restriction, a blockage, and a reduction that the libido is made to repress its flows in order to contain them in the narrow cells of the type 'couple,' family,' 'person,' 'objects.' And doubtless such a blockage is necessarily justified: the libido does not come to consciousness except in relation to a given body, a given person that it takes as object." (293-294)

and then i paid and - surprisingly - had the impression that i'm acting much more [... hm, i can't find the word, but what i mean is a mixture of rational, composed and consequential, i know there is one, but i just can't find it] than you. and when i got home and walked through the door, your shadow stayed outside [which this very sentence partly disproves, though].