A Thousand Plateaus

for fucking fuck’s sake! for the past five or six days i have been totally apathetic, as if someone had mixed a sedative in my coffee. but tonight i’m suddenly all sort of hyper-active, thinking “something’s got to happen, something’s got to happen!!!” i’m so glad the gig is coming up, otherwise i’d surely blow a fuse or two. and why? and why? and why? watched the news and afterwards there was an announcement for an upcoming program, a documentary about call-centers. and the camera showed the entrance of the office building where you told me you would work and sure enough in the next shot i saw you sitting there, the back of your head in close up, your blond hair all stubbornly fuzzy and weedlike under the headset. you’re not even fucking beautiful! and still, and still!

when i entered the café, gorgeous victoria had just started her shift and she walked up to my table not wearing an apron yet and i couldn’t help but admiring her perfect legs and – sorry – her ass. secretly, of course.
“what can i do for you?”
“hm, a fresh peppermint tea?” i played parts of the set this afternoon to slowly get into rehearsing mode but i realized that i still had to cough every other note i tried to sing.
“i’m not sure whether we have fresh mint. let me check…” and she disappeared into the kitchen where i could hear her talk to angelo, the chef.
“no, we don’t have any fresh peppermint anymore. but it’s not on the menu anymore anyway!” i overheard him say.
“well, it’s for phil. i would have made one for phil…”
“oh, i can make him a fresh ginger tea. ask if he wants to have a ginger tea.”
her face appeared from behind the kitchen door.
“what about a ginger tea?”
“sure!”
and five minutes later angelo brought me a ginger-lemon-honey tea that tasted delicious!

“finally bought a couple of goldfish…” a mail informed me earlier this week when i was still feeling rather sickly. “…when will we meet again?”
“i think i’ve caught a bad cold…” i wrote back “…lying in bed with fever.”
the answer came quickly:
“if i knew where you’re living i’d come around and make you some ginger tea.” and i was suddenly glad that i never gave away my address. who would have thought that my paranoia pays off one day!

when i went to pay, gorgeous victoria handed me the check and she suddenly said:
“you know… jodie missed you at her birthday-party…”
which was kind of an odd comment because of course i had met jodie at least three times since monday. victoria must have realized this as well, cleared her throat a little and looked up. our eyes locked. i smiled and i managed to bite my tongue instead of asking sardonically ‘and you? did you miss me, too?’. so i simply replied:
“is *that* true?”

saturday morning is traditionally the time of week i clear up my desk. this much treasured custom usually involves me taking the stack of papers and stuffing it into whichever drawer still has some space left. but today i had to be a little more careful because there were rather important papers on top of that stack, so i got out the documents folder to file them, and i stumbled upon an old report card from first class! and i was surprised how accurate it describes my personality even now. perhaps i haven’t changed that much after all.

wow - weird dreams!!! dreamt of s.! that hasn’t happened for quite some time. i was staying with princess superstar and she was there, too, and we met and i whistled and ignored her. hmmmm. *scratcheshead*

went to the gym in the morning because the voices in my head commanded me to. after five minutes i started to sweat (it usually takes about five minutes, so in the middle of the second song i normally feel the beads dropping down my forehead), but i noticed that something was different : the sweat felt cold - my entire body felt cold. guess i wasn’t *that* fit yet. good song to work out to today : calexico “deep down”. it had the perfect speed. plus the driving snare, regular bass and urgent melody that keeps one running even though one cannot anymore. i can listen to such a song for thirty or forty minutes on the machine. once i’m in the perfect rhythm it’s really like being part and parcel of a perpetuum mobile assemblage.

and because alice has described her work out program in detail the other day, here’s my spiel : the machine is set to resistance level 16 and the speed is usually between 13.5 and 14.5 km/h. after 40-45 minutes i’m usually going in reverse for five to ten minutes, lowering the resistance but enhancing the speed to 17-18 km/h. then i’m back to the starting settings for the rest of the hour (usually two songs). these last two songs normally do the trick of inducing that feeling of lying or being weightless or exploding, even. after 58 minutes there’s a five minute ‘cool down’ phase which i’m also doing in reverse. all this adds up to about 950-1000 calories and slightly over 15 km.

to get you there:
radiohead : there there
björk : hyperballad
catherine wheel : crank
radiohead : arpeggi
laura veirs : cast a hook
joni mitchell : sex kills
morrissey : southpaw (ten minutes!)
suzanne vega : zephyr & i
blumfeld : ich, wie es wirklich war
david byrne : angels
kate bush : cloudbusting
kate bush : sunset / nocturn / aerial (over 20 minutes)
10000 maniacs : stockton gala days
radiohead : i can’t
radiohead : pyramid song
phoenix : rally
phoenix : second to none
moloko : the time is now
kate bush : running up that hill
lotion : around (a classic!!)
michelle shocked : come a long way
talking heads : road to nowhere
tori amos : cornflake girl
laura veirs: rialto
midlake : roscoe

last ten minutes bliss songs::
foo fighters : everlong live
k’s choice : believe
indigo girls : fugitive
radiohead : let down
paul simon : the cool, cool river
decemberists : sons and daughters

got pulled out of dreams by a friendly wake up call from elaine at 6:30 in the morning (she just wanted to ask if i felt any better, which i did). got up, showered, dressed, did the laundry, filled the fridge, did the washing up and then ended up totally out of breath - guess i had overestimated the speed of the recovery process. so i decided against going to the gym.

somebody pointed this video out to me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0tsPKbgrhY

and somebody pointed this event out to me:

spent the past days in a kind of daze. i can’t remember felling that fuzzy ever before. as if i had been drugged. i couldn’t really get up, all my joints hurt, there were waves of sharp, cold pain shooting down my arm arbitrarily and the only thing i could do was turning from left to right in bed, groaning and cursing. i kept the curtains closed and tried to sleep as much as possible. which wasn’t really a problem because my body seemed to be switching back into sleep-mode almost immediately whenever i woke up, not really allowing my consciousness to surface. i couldn’t really eat, even. made myself a chicken soup but only had three spoons of it. i missed jodie’s birthday party but the good news is that she finally has got a new apartment.
i’m feeling a little better now, even though i still have a fever, and when i’m up and walking around in the apartment i can only do so in slow motion. guess that’s what it feels like when you’re old. i’ll probably stay in bed tomorrow too i really feel the urge to go to the gym, though – it’s been four days already!

woke up with headache. moving my arms hurt. moving my legs hurt. coughing hurt. the drops of water falling on my skin in the shower hurt.  moving my head quickly made the room blur. the towel hurt. apparently i fraternize with jodie and elaine who are both down with the flu. even though i felt like a piece of shit i kept saying to myself: “but you need to go to the gym today, you need to go to the gym today!” seems like i got a serious anankasm problem.

fuck - it’s such a beautiful day and i’m bound to the bed :-(. it’s like spring in the middle of february : sunny and mild and babies crying and children screaming  outside. i sent a photo of me clumsily holding pss’ baby to elaine yesterday night. she wrote back “i love it. you’ll make a great DAD!” now *that* made me laugh.