I Made My Day

I was going through my bank statement today. Perhaps I was a bit tipsy when I was transferring some money from my German to my Dutch account, so it came as a surprise to see the transfer on my bank statement today. But more so, to see a message to myself in the 'details' field: "kisses, boy".

Das Erste

Yesterday I stayed up long enough to witness a miracle of modern television. In that liminal hour between too late and too early, strange things begin happening on the TV. Most of the channels either stop broadcasting altogether and there are others which never stop. I discovered a third type, perfect for stoners, insomniacs, and anyone ready to have their mind blown. When Das Erste was done with their normal programming, one could witness a footage of a train going from Chur to Filisur (48km), as would be seen by a machinist of the train: just an endless railroad, bucolic landscapes, gentle hum of the engine, going and going and going. There is something absolutely fascinating about this useless redoubling. There is no story, there is no camera work, there is not even a time condensation to make it at least somehow different from reality. Just a footage of a train going and going, something one would barely be interested in watching were he an actual passenger on that train, consciously placed in the context of a medium which is a tool of escapism rather than a strange magnification of what is already out there anyway.

Trouvaille

The weather outside, whenever I am outside, only forced by necessity, naturally, makes me both want to give up on life and smash something really really hard. But my life is full of micro-events that happen in the confines of my gorgeous apartment and which, sometimes, are turned into events that are pretty macro, thanks to the internet.

Like the one when my mother found out that we have solid Polish roots and are eligible in time for, well, europeanization. 

I have lost my glasses and had managed to retrieve them a week later via sheer persistence, persistence, a something I'd never be famous for. 

I have spilled a glass of merlot over a 3000-pages anthology of cultural criticism, page 993, Heidegger's lecture on language, something that upset me first but now appears to be delightfully decadent.

I am slowly becoming some sort of an expert on Italian politics, which does not prevent me thinking that I might have voted for Grillo if I had a chance. The five star movement, by the way, reads very well together with Arendt's Elements and Origins of Totalitarianism.

Pecking at a thick crust of signifiers.