A Thousand Plateaus

while the cashier was scanning the contents of my shopping basket at the drugstore the woman behind me gave me a look as if my license plate said “sodom / gomorrah county”. with a little more courage i would have said : “and that’s for *this* week-end only!” but i didn’t even hiss : “can’t a fellow have some fun?”, but my thoughts were somewhere else, anyway, since i was totally absorbed by that gorgeous cover of “i’ll be your mirror” by clem snide that opens a compilation cd that alice had sent me the other day along with a book, tons of sweets and a t-shirt

i’m off to babel tower now…

it’s bloody two in the morning and i’ve just returned from a birthday party that one of the waitresses of the café is throwing at the “connection”. see, it’s all connected. jodie was there and gorgeous victoria and c. and g. and v. and s. (not related to *the* s.) and d. and a. and b. and j. and at one point i was looking through the small and smoky room and thinking: “blind me, all these people i got to know in the past year and half of them would go through hell for me!” and that made me very happy.

later in the evening they set up a playstation in the bar and i was karaoke “i got you, babe” with m., the girl who turned 24 today.

okay, i’m officially obsessed with this song:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/esirhl

the melody is simply too haunting and the bitter feeling that life’s just too ironic to be real is too well-known to me.

my rash hasn’t gone yet even though i haven’t touched a crumb of ginger the past two weeks! maybe it *does* have another cause. (oh yes : and spare yourself any commentary concerning the correlation of semi-camp 70s broadway ballads and irritation of the skin!)

bah! i must have picked the oldest tea-cake that has ever been sold in the cafeteria. not much to report. worksome week-end. the gym really wore me out. visited jodie in her new apartment. i want to move, too! and have a brighter, bigger and quieter place.

oh bloody fucking hell! i just returned from helping jodie move. actually i thought that this would be a piece of cake. but we were hauling stuff from six to ten! three trucks full of stuff. and heavy things such as washing machine, dishwasher, three tvs, two king size beds, two sofas, two desks, a three meter long kitchen table, two large closets, countless cabinets and boxes over boxes. it was hell! even though we were 12 people it took us over four hours! we were only three men, though, so we had to carry all the heavy stuff.

jodie’s new apartment is beautiful! she’s moving in with the roommate with which she is sharing an apartment already. they have two rooms each, plus a large kitchen. the apartment is flooded with light, has bright white walls and light wooden boards. seeing it really made me want to move, too.

spending the morning at the doctor’s, being placed from the large waiting room via the smaller waiting room to another waiting room. finally the doctor walked in (think of him as a slightly taller version of peter sellers in the party), i told him what i thought was wrong and he asked:
“so you had the flu?”
“yes”
“did you take any medication”
“only ‘grippostat’”
“hm, hm, hm…” he mumbled and made some pencil notes in a file.
“but it surely can’t be from that! i mean, it’s not really a strong drug!” i insisted and he stopped writing, looked up at me and smiled mildly.
“well, you know, that’s not the point! you can have an allergic reaction to just *any*thing : clothes, chemicals, food, drugs…”
and i thought: ‘wait a minute! food?!? it must be the ginger!’ because, if i remember correctly, it all started after having that ginger tea. so that is my guess : i’m probably allergic to ginger, which is - as usual - beautifully ironic because in german there is a close phonetic resemblance between ginger and my exexex-girlfriend’s first name.

he prescribed me some pills. pft! an allergy! i have always been so proud that my body is so tough and resistant :o(

the other night alice said to me: “but be prepared. it will hurt.”

and it fucking does.

this is one of those notsogood days. spent all morning trying to get an appointment at a dermatologist that is not in mid-april! after i had called various practices (the best i could get was: ‘you can come by tomorrow morning to the open office hours. but you better bring something to read, it might take three to four hours…’) i finally talked to a nice sounding receptionist.
“when would you like to come? can you make it this afternoon?”
“sure!”
but when i told her my insurance status she informed me that they only accept patiences with a private health insurance. bummer.

went to the gym then. 14 loooooooong kilometers - i was still coughing as much as i was sweating. when i returned i talked to elaine on the phone who has got the flu, too, and was lying in bed, going through near-death experiences. then i sat down to make a shopping list which i forgot at home, as i realized when i was standing under the neon lights of the supermarket’s grocery aisle. i packed the shopping cart to the brim and went to pay. unfortunately the cash register wouldn’t accept my cash-card. the friendly cashier smiled apologetically at me while she was pulling it again and again through the scanner, even cleaning it with window cleaner. the line behind me got longer and longer, people rolling their eyes and cursing me under their breath. but it didn’t work, so i had to leave the shopping cart by the cashier and run halfway through the district to get to the next cash machine. of course it had started to rain in the meantime. i returned soaking wet after twenty minutes with ‘real’ money, paid and carried the stuff home.

the other day elaine, thomas and i received a parcel from princess superstar. it contained three different kinds of muesli that were custom made for us.

thomas’s mix contained gojiberries because - according to pss - they have an “anti-aging effect”

elaine’s mix contained canabis nuts

and my mix contained…, well see for yourself

sitting at the café at the usual table in the corner, things are passing through me, mostly memory : i’m rereading parts of the old online journal to scan it for lines that can be recycled in songs, and even though most of what i’m reading is giving me the creeps because it’s so corny there are some paragraphs and descriptions that bring back facts and faces i had already forgotten about. very, very beautiful things. events that seem unbelievably graceful in retrospect, descriptions of gigs, descriptions of eyes and laughter and worries. and then i’m looking up and there’s the empty chair where you had been sitting with me when we had returned that summer sunday evening from our bike tour down the rhine. you stayed with me that night, for the first time in my apartment. i had been so fucking happy! thank god i deleted your phone number. fucking fucking fucking hell.