A Thousand Plateaus

and then a friend of mine sent me this song:
“it’s my favorite good-night song. be gentle to it!” he asks me because i’m usually not very sensitive in my comments about the music he’s sending me.

but this song starts playing and i don’t need to be gentle to it, because it is gentle to me. it has the kind of sound and ease i so much long for in the things i do myself, and which i will never reach. the guitar alone is just … great. i have no idea WHO is playing it  - and i didn’t ask and i don’t want to know. it’s probably some 23 year old handsome singer/songwriter, one of those hip musicians with their complicated shoes!

the point is that it does to me what few songs do and what even fewer people can do : it puts me into tenderness-mode. it is so effortless and as floating… when i think about what a hard time i had with the drums for ‘dialogues’ and here you have such an easy, such a perfect arrangement, the perfect, understated electronic counterpart to the acoustic guitar which is playing this simple but delicate and heartopening riff :o(
I T   M A K E S   M E   S A D
good music makes me sad. because i can’t stand that it’s not me who is singing it. i’m a sicko. i’d give my soul for that extra-bit of talent that would lift me out of my mediocrity. no, this is not a fishing for compliments

johnny commented: oh, are you still sleeping with skyscraper girl? i thought she was out of the picture.

actually i was coming home from another occupation (one which is probably morally equally objective). the skyscraper i was referring to was one i saw blinking in the distance, at the other end of town.

> as regards the n. situation: there is no guilt to be felt in wanting something, there is no guilt to be felt in not wanting something

yes, you’re right. the guilt i’m feeling is more about the fact that i might have signaled that i’m interested, probably for very selfish and ego-istic reasons: i think i was trying to see whether i can make that person interested in me without really deciding beforehand whether or not i am serious about this. but then you can’t know this right from the start, can you? 

> certainly many women too stay endlessly in lukewarm relationships out of some sense of obligation, some “surely this is the kind of person i must be wanting to wrap my arms around.”

yes - and obligation is the worst reason to stay together. honestly, i would rather lose a person that i love like life than realizing that the relationship is based on some sense of obligation. one wants to be loved, not pitied, right?

> but there’s this anxiety with men, the “oh god, i don’t want this person, what do i do? what’s WRONG with me?” let’s not forget that ultimately, evolutionary psychology ideas aside, we ARE more than just animals, we are acting on more, it is more complicated and subtle than that.

agreed. and i wouldn’t even say that it’s some kind of animalistic instinct or drive that makes the n. situation so difficult. because as for drives, n. is everything you could wish for: incredibly handsome and attractive.

> i fail to understand why so many people seem to find virtue in being able to teach one’s heart to lie.

yes, but then where is this ‘heart’ located? i had moments with a. that were confusingly schizophrenic because part of me thought: “how can i be with this person right now? what the hell am i doing here? we don’t even speak the same language, we don’t share A THING…” but then we switched off the light and i felt that body fall asleep in my arms and it was everything i ever wanted and every place i ever wanted to be.

listening to my heart - to what i decided is my heart speaking - didn’t really lead to very happy situations in the past years. because my ‘heart’ always seems to side with the impossible. 

i thought that you’d want what i want… sorry, my dear.

there was a monstrous moon hanging next to the blue blinking skyscraper in a crisp winter night. i almost drove off the street on my way home because it was so - breathtaking.

mood-o-meter: 1.2

mittwoch der 10.12.2008 wird in erinnerung bleiben als der tag, an dem daphne nach einer theaterpremiere in einer überfüllten und verrauchten jazz-bar beim thema “maurermarmelade” (=hackfleisch) vor lachen in den vollen aschenbecher prustete und ein feiner ascheregen auf jan und phil niederging.

walking cross-campus to the cafeteria with a couple of colleagues i’m thinking that - with my kind of luck - of all the 44 thousand students that the university has i will probabaly stumble across b…. and really: 30 seconds later when i’m walking up the steps to the cafeteria, b.’s walking towards me. our eyes meet, an exchange of shy smiles, and suddenly my appetite’s gone.

well, either due to good upbringing or genuine forgiveness n. did not tell me to go fuck myself. and this means what?

exhausting days. worries about j. who is not well. days fly by too quickly. work. gym. eat. hardly enough time for the important things

From: info@threadless.com
Subject: Update to your Threadless Order #1568XXX.

well, at least now i know where they are…

tried to write a mail to n. all week-end long. haven’t managed to do so. started the first sentence. hit delete. started another first sentence. hit delete again. fuck.

oh great great i’ve fucked it up big time again! how many times did i have to post this sentence in the past year ?????

returned home at three in the morning, fell into bed tired and exhausted, cell phone next to the pillow, feeling the need to apologize or explain, but i couldn’t think of any words that hadn’t been said earlier or simply of any words that would do the job of explaining. i don’t know how to explain anymore. i don’t know what to say anymore.

fell into a deep and uneasy sleep with bad dreams shaped by the overwhelming sense of fear to hurt another person. not a good starting point. plus the realization that i don’t bloody know what i want. right now it feels like i will stay reluctant to ever seriously bond to a person on an emotional level again. why is that? why this shift? it didn’t use to be that way. is it some fear of losing that lies at the core of this restlessness? is it a newly developed fear of committing to a monogamous relationship? or is it because it’s not the right person? or is it because n. signaled “i want you”? am i stuck in some perverse situation which the narrator in “annie hall” described with the marx brothers’s joke “i don’t want to join any club that accepts a person like me as a member”?? have i stumbled into a 70s woody allen movie? 

n.’s eyes mixed with anger and hurt and irritation when i whispered “i better get home now” after we kissed. understandably. but what is it that i want? why can’t i settle for a sensible, a reasonable love? all signs say: “go boy! or do you honestly think you’ll get such a chance again, find anything better?! look at you! if you refuse this, you’re even stupider than we all thought!”

and maybe a reasonable love that is less stormy and less forceful and less intense is also less destructive in the end and would simply be better for me? a settled love. a tamed love. a passionless love?

and this is the weird thing : i’m talking about passion even though i’ve met this person six times only. who knows how much passion i might be able to develop! but then, what a difficult condition for cultivating feelings is this : to wait for passion to emerge. doesn’t passion has to be there from the start, as a fertilizer?

when i’m putting on my paul simon coat n. is leaning in the doorway, dressed all in black, hands folded behind the back, suddenly looking much younger than 25, slim and fragile, face in the shadow. and i feel as if i had drags for hands and a suicide bomb belt on my waist. how do you operate like this without causing hurt?

your heart’s a mess
you won’t admit to it.
it makes no sense
but i’m desperate to connect…