beauty is the condition under which an amazement is brought about (a gasping) followed by a flow of affection that, in the best of cases, effectuates a tenderness that expresses itself in a corporeal encounter (a touch, a kiss) or a creative act (words, music, imges).
yeah i know: it's dynamite!
okay, the weirdest thing happened tonight. after i had talked to elaine on the phone (she was checking on me to see how i was, which i thought was nice; plus she - to my very joy - said something along the lines of: 'you just wait! in two weeks you're back together again! wanna bet!?') so after she had thus said exactly what i wanted to hear i went to the café to write a mail to alice.
it wasn't very crowded and after an hour, jodie came in and had a beer at the counter, and at the table by the door two women were sitting, one of them gave me a strange look every now and then. then jodie started to throw paper balls at me while shouting "booooooooooring!" in my direction. and just when i had finished typing this tongue-in-cheek sentence to alice:
"how can so many people in cologne NOT stumble over my charm and intelligence? it's impossible!"
caro came to my table, brought me a diet coke and said:
"hey phil, the two girls who just left asked me to give this to you. they specifically said to give it to you only after they've left..."
it was their check, and on the backside one of them had scribbled:
Hi, we have been two gals sitting at the second table by the door. I didn't have enough courage to talk to you... Maybe you feel like getting to know me?
this world. i tell you.
it started to rain about eleven in the morning, it started to get dark by three. by five i was depressed and by seven i had eaten a box of cookies while laboring with the ulmer paper.
had various impulses over the course of the day, one of them was running onto the street, garbing people who look like they're playing an instrument, shaking them by their lapel and forcing them to make a band *right now*. i need a rehearsing room again, a couple of talented, friendly guys, a microphone and some songs to work on. bloody hell.
other impulses included smashing things (including my head), sleeping, icecreamchocolatesauceorgying and getting drunk.
realized that it's increasingly difficult to find music that does not evoke persons|events|emotions immediately. ended up with "here comes the sun" on repeat again. then yorkston's "i awoke" - just for the beauty of the guitar and the chorus of the melody. realized that my fingers are ice cold.
mailed with a friend and she suggested to get professional help. hm. every time that little letter-icon in the taskbar lights up my heart stupidly does the same, until i check and have to find out that it's either spam or a message from the vegalist. jamie said "if the circumstances are making you crazy and you cannot change them, then you've got to change your attitude towards the circumstances!" which sounds sensible at first. don't really see how 'professional help' could help me change my attitude.
because, really, it's not a 'simple' attitude problem. we're talking deep structure here. we're talking about fundamental changes that would equal a complete reorganization. we're talking emotional lobotomy. it would mean shutting myself off to any kind of perception, sensation and intensity that threatens coherency and sleep.
even if a professional big game hunter handed me a gun, would i shoot the bears? i'd fear that it would end like in a cheap nightmare and as soon as i had fired off the bullets i would realize that the bears are actually me and that i've just fired a big lead shot into my own ass. yes, by chasing me all over the continent they have driven me to places that i had never ventured to go without their hot breath in my neck. yes, i admit to that! and yet there's a fucking difference between being out of breath and bleeding to death. fuck!
FUCKING HELL. grabbed bag & books and headed to the café at eleven. it's not that crowded. gorgeous victoria is working. she puts a beck's in front of me. the opening chords of "this life" are pearling into my ear and the first sip of the cold beer fills my mouth with a cool, bitter taste and i have to moan audibly. i read the fucking letter i sent to you and then read it again and again and again not understanding how the hell i could have been so stupid. bigmouth strikes again. wish there was a way to take it back.
yes, i know, annoying deleuze babble again, but sometimes i do think this is what a cancerous BwO must feel like, or an 'empty,' shut off one in which things only circulate without ever flowing and connecting to the outside.
and then the frustration about my incapability to put it into words or a songs or whatever. it just keeps eating away at me, layer after layer. you. she. and everyone caught in the fire. this is not about people. this is not about certain people. if victoria the beautiful (who, by the way has put on the "phil" playlist of the café's mac and now suzanne's "the silver lady" is playing, an ultra rare bootleg of the second song she's ever written taped at a concert from before she even had a record deal), if that same gorgeous victoria would bend over the bar in the early morning when she's closing the place and i am the last guest and she would touch my cheek like you used to do... what a silly healing sensation that would be. it would replace every 'you' in my texture with a 'her' as if by microsoft word's 'replace' function.
annie dillard describes how she, by chance, sees a mockingbird diving gracefully from the sky and she suggests that "beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there."
it's a consoling thought for dillard. it's a threatening one for me. what if you miss it. what a disquieting idea that there is beauty and grace in a place where i'm not, that i'm not part of it.
it's 01:58 and i see that you're online and i see that you have just visited my profile without leaving a message. why. and this is not even a question.
sitting at the café, working on the ulmer paper. why did nobody tell me that i used geology and geography interchangeably?? which is, of course, a coarse conceptual error! jodie is working and her presence soothes me. i'm glancing over to my mobile phone again and again, feeling tempted to text you, even though i've just sent you a three page letter the other day. to which there – predictably – hasn't been an answer yet. and if i'm honest to myself i have to admit that there will never be one. because even *i* would have been freaked out by it probably. each time the door to the café opens the faint hope springs from my heart into my brain that it might be you, looking for me. you know this place, we've been here before. you know where to find me. i hoped that you would come i gave you my address. why did i think that you would get what i'm after when even i don't get it?
i have to think about that one sentence that you wrote again and again, and the fact that you wrote it when you were drunk makes it so much more painful : "i can't give you more." and as soon as i remember these words, something closes shut in me, two steel double doors, and troublingly, that’s when i realize they had been creaking open in the first place. i answered "i never asked for more. i never asked you for anything." what a blatant lie! maybe i did not *ask* for more, but i wanted more all the same : i wanted unconditionality. unconditionality as in those moments whose memory haunts me now like a commercial that one hates and that pops up again and again unpredictably in the ad-breaks of the feature film. it's just one scene, a close up of your face with that look you gave me a couple of times, an approving, questioning, challengingly smile that looked like genuine, unconditional love. yep, l*o*v*e. there, i said it! so, sue me! blast, you did already, i forgot!
argh!! and two questions are bugging me tonight while i'm sitting here, watching jodie with one eye so i can defend myself against objects she's throwing in my direction (beermats, paperballs, napkins, crown caps and ice-cubes) : 1) is this self-pity and what is self-pity and how do you recognize self-pity when you see it? what is self-pity and what are real bear-slashes? and 2) why the fuck is EVERYBODY smoking. [checking phone] i mean statistically there MUST be a few people here who don't, but EVERYBODY has got a cigarette in his or her hand, except for me. and quite frankly, it pisses me off! blessed america!
so, ich probiere jetzt erstmal meinen neuen weichspüler aus : sommerbrise mit ringelblumenöl.
"you have sent *this* off?!!?" elaine is asking, her eyes oscillating between being shocked and being troubled, the pages of the letter falling into her lap. i'm nodding, not turning my head away from the screen.
"words fail me!" she whispers, the neonlights are buzzing. it's only three in the afternoon, but it must be the grayest, darkest day of the whole year : constant rain and cold wind.
"i mean, really, *this* is what you sent off? if somebody wrote me a letter like this i wouldn't want to see him again. ever!" it slowly dawns on me that i might have made a big mistake, like with a capitol 'm.'
"you really wrote..." and she's quoting a particularly frank and not-very-flattering passage "maybe you should consider being institutionalized? you're clearly mad!"
"well, i tried to be honest..."
"you think you'll get an answer to this?!?!!"
"i dunno, really. i have no idea. maybe not. i think i wish i would."
walk home through the rain, the legs of my pants wet up to the knees, then into the dark apartment, the light doesn't really help against the gloom. switch on the pc, maybe i received a mail. i didn't. then quickly: music to distract and heal. i'm talking to myself for a couple of minutes to fight the panic. checking mail again. nothing. fixing myself some ready-to-heat chinese food, but i can't really taste anything. yes, fucking hell! i'm missing you. so! now i've said it. i'm missing you! it's like a horizon had been snatched, disappeared in a second. i realize that i have to get out, despite the rain and darkness outside, pack my things and run to the café in the rain. caro's working, it's not very full but the air is used up and filled with smoke. the lights are too bright and i'm not feeling very comfortable. wish jodie was here. if i were a dog they'd put me to sleep.
[later]
back home because i couldn't stand the air in the café. impossible to chose some music. fuck. jrzfhhiu kjfoqewf bvekrvir98rb4 kjvb49, av84n akajv arb48 kb er089 qz8q qz8tqzhöqg
just returned from meeting jamie and sharon. got mildly drunk (have to head to work tomorrow morning), actually not drunk enough to send off the letter. but i'll do it anyways. listened to martha wainwright's "these flowers" all fucking day long. soon you will be sitting somewhere, utterly bewildered, thinking to yourself: 'a white plastic bag? do i have to understand that?' life sucks.
http://www.editor.fotolog.pl/ [you've got to scroll down to the bottom of the page]
it's half past one at night and there's a full moon hnging over the house :-( which means : lying in bed being unable to sleep although i'm dead tired and my eyes feel sore and are aching. at about eleven i heard some paws scratching on the marble hallway stairs, so i took the term papers i still needed to correct, slipped out of the back window and sneaked to the café where i worked for another two hours until jodie closed the place. so now it's actually bedtime for bonzo, but i'm all hyperhyperhyper for some weird reason. alice sent me the entire martha wainwright album tonight, and listening halfway into it made me take my dusty guitar and play a couple of chords and i came up with something that might develop into something...
i said there had been a flood
i said there's nothing left
i hoped that you would come
i gave you my address
did i mention that i handed in the thesis yesterday?
