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. 

TИAЯ

I was bookmarking my horribly composed reader for one of the classes. It had no table of contents and it was impossible to find anything in it. And to make it a perfectly OCD endeavor I decided that bookmarks have all to be on the same side and all be readable from one side. The problem is that the bookmarks were writable only on one of its surfaces. So, in order to make it all accord to the plan, I had to write on some of my semi-transparent articles in reverse. RAWLS had to become Z_IWAЯ etc. etc. What struck me is how quickly my brain adapted to the task. After an attempt or two my crooked reverse letters pored as if there was no reversal at all. I wonder why. It also made me regress somewhere deep into my childhood when that kind of behavior was to be overcome rather than mastered.

Tracy

This semester for me is a blast. I am taking linguistics, lit&cultural theory, politics of modernity and Shakespeare. My Shakespeare and Cultural Theory professor is a more fun version of Tracy. His unshakable staples are "Welcome, you are late", "Welcome, welcome, welcome" (no shit!), "There is much more to say", "Great point", "Absolutely" and he pulls his chair to the middle of the room, crosses his skinny legs and gestures with his hands. He might, in fact, be doing Tracy better than Tracy himself. Never ever has the hermeneutic circle sounded so seductive.

Carts and marts

Today I have seen some surprisingly effective contemporary art. Maybe because it seemed less of an exhibition venue and more of an artsy amusement park. "The Dark Universe". Before you enter, together with a brochure, one gets a warning note: "You are about to enter an exhibition with intense audio visual installations. These installations can trigger seizures with people who suffer from epilepsy." Dizzying strobes, tangible sounds, darkness and space. The kind of art that cares about its audience. And then I was looking at some Newmanns at Stedelijk and their size was clearly betraying a self-consciousness of a completely different kind.

Fridarrrrgg

Gosh why am I so exhausted and irritated? Especially considering the fact that February has been extremely goodnewsworthy, comfortable, and happy for me.
I am tempted to assume it is my nicotine withdrawal finally kicking in but it has been quite some time since I stopped. Too much coffee? Too little coffee? Books for my new term are too expensive (that might be it, over 250 euros in total)? The world and people in it do not conform to my expectations (it was raining horizontally two days ago; today it is horizontally snowing)? My skin is dry after a shower. It has been too many emails. Gosh I'm tired of emails. They disconnected my TV. My bike is a prisoner of the garage of which I don't have a key. Holy shit, at the beginning of the post I really was at a loss why I was so irritated, now it is crystal clear. More coffee it is then.

die Nachrichten

I have not seen a book in weeks. I have gained 6 kilos. I have lost motivation. My nose almost touches the screen when I am reading the news on my "11 computer. I can only read the news when I am eating oatmeal. I have become a better cook. Spotify has for some reason stopped playing advertisements. I might have forgotten how to walk. My mnemonic device for German conjugation in Dativ is "merman": dem der dem den. And "solar radiation! solar radiation!" for Genetiv: des, der, des, der. My brain is where random things thrive and where useful information comes to die.

Strange

Strange things are happening.

Smoking

There is only one good reason to quit smoking. If you are planning to stay alive for a while.

Academia is the only vocational choice that is awesomely compatible with getting old. Pick any other job - and you are just getting feebler and more useless. But in the academia age is an asset.

I have been smoking for at least 6 years on and off now. Somehow, my motivation to live always comes and goes. My motivation not to die in agony, however, comes a bit more often. And yet.

Smoking is the closest thing to an orgasm. They are entirely different, of course, but the experience of smoking, too, is difficult to describe, somewhat addictive, and somewhat pointless. And difficult to kick.

And yet. It has come to this that it is very difficult for me to imagine life without smoking. It's like "If I quit what am I gonna do?". What I am gonna do with all that free time, with all these freed up pauses between things, I'm not even sure what it is to live without an oral fixation anymore.

More importantly, is it even worth it? That requires some sort of a deep theoretical deliberation.

Pauses

An article in the New Yorker made me miss Paris. An evening stroll to the store made me miss all other evening strolls to the store when my head was full of ideas. I think in spasms and like all spasms they are barely controllable. If I am lucky, I get something from these mental explosions, I save it for later when it is all over and all is quiet again. But I am rarely lucky and what could have been the most exciting thing in the world yesterday becomes today as meaningless as anything else. And then there is nothing to do but wait: read halfheartedly, speak halfheartedly, and think halfheartedly. This is the time of looking backward. Reminiscing, trying to forget, trying to silence the voices, or voicing over what is normally kept in silence. This is also the time of looking forward; but without hope and right onto death. There is nothing that can be done to vindicate one's longevity, but even more so there is nothing that would justify one's premature departure.  It is a conspicuous waste of time which cannot be simply remedied by a willful act.

Dreams

Dreams are the worst. A bunch of nonsense tied into a loose narrative.

Last night was one of those. First, not only i couldn't sleep but neither could I think of anything remotely interesting or productive. And then this dream.

I had two girlfriends, both crazy jealous, both dressed in all black, hair also black, neither knows about the other. Never had I any fantasy remotely resembling any of this; one is plenty to handle but two! So one of them was super short for some reason and the other had attachment issues. The one with attachment issues had to 'habituate' herself to me by me stroking her lightly until she feels uncomfortable and tells me to stop. Ok I know where this one is coming from. I saw 'Hope Springs' before going to sleep where this was one of the 'sexercises' prescribed by Steve Carell the therapist to a long time married couple of Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones. As one of the reviewers said, "If you like watching movies where old people are trying to have sex this one is for you!" But where the second girl is coming from I have no idea. Tommy Lee Jones was very good in the movie though...

I really prefer lucid dreams, ones when the frontal lobe is not completely asleep and tells you what to think of all the mess that is going on in the dream. They also never feel like sleep. Once I even dreamt of nothing at all but my brain still managed to concoct a whole research theory based on the eight pages of Heidegger's exposition of anxiety in Being and Time. Or Bergson's Time and Free Will actually - there was a lot of stuff about managing the idea of duration and extension.

another update

So no, of course yesterday's Grizzly Bear gig was not divine. But not profane either. How could it be: the venue, suggestively called 'Paradiso', used to be a church and is pretty much still is. Right above the stage and above an appropriate stained-glass window it still says 'SOLI DEO GLORIA' ("glory to God alone") which one can easily take as an astute commentary on the fake idols that are present on the stage at any particular day you happen to be there. And the guys from Grizzly Bear themselves are probably the closest thing to a church choir band than anyone else in my music library. Moreover, the smoke machines hadn't stopped working for a second so the band was constantly shrouded in a cloud, another suggestive symbol. To say nothing of the crazy light effects. Well, I'll say a bit. The main contraption looked like a bunch of balloons floating in the thin air and filled with candles. Need I say candles and churches go very well together. The congregation too was very solemn, the "hands folded tight" (Arcade Fire, 2010) kind of crowd. I, however, have failed to experience anything close to a religious trance. I blame my logic exam that was happening simultaneously with the gig and which (the former) I had to partially forfeit for that reason. When I had finished my exam in 25 minutes instead of 90 the woman who was administering the it looked genuinely worried, asked me if I was feeling well and when I answered I had to go must have assumed a close relative had died or, maybe, that an earthquake was coming. Despite the manic bike ride across the city it was worth it. And the afterparty had a revelation or two to offer. In a place called 'Waterhole' for some reason (reminded me of 'Watergate', ah, Berlin), a band called 'Ruben's Cosmic Jam' had a few revelations to offer. In their rendition of Bob Dylan's 'Knocking on the Heaven's Door' the singer insisted that  she'd rather knock on other people's doors than on God's door (who's not there to open anyway). Lesson learned. And a lot of fat kids dancing for some reason.

Ka-pow

Cocorosie turned out to be a perfect soundtrack to strolling around Amsterdam. Toy dinosaurs roaring, bells clinking, tiny but very concentrated, like the city itself. Amsterdam is a city with a very very short attention span: it repeats itself every hundred meters or so. Never in my life have I seen so many H&Ms and McDonalds' on one single street. This, it seems, is also part of the attractiveness of the city for tourism: it instantly hits you with everything it has (because it has it everywhere) making it not even necessary to know where you are going - miss one place and there would be another one just like it in a couple of blocks ahead. But yes, Cocorosie. And who else could sing "Well, it's not Yugoslavia. It's not Yugoslavia at all" in a such excruciatingly sweet manner.

Saturday night lights

I thing I've got my life back into my hands. All it took is to clean up my room/apartment. I read like crazy, I have started a serious blog (not his one), I'm working on my foray into the academia, doing nice useless things, appreciating Handel, the only worry I've got left is not to die prematurely. But that's anyone's worry, like it or not. Maybe it's true, after all, all I need is water, a gun and rabbits.

Schlafen schlafen

I've been having a strange relationship with sleep recently. Today, for example, I have overslept a class by 4 hours. And it's not that the class was early. I had to wake up at 10 and woke up at 2 instead... I have also tried some alternative sleeping patterns to aid memorization, but, again, ended up sleeping 12 hours instead of 7. Getting up has become a terrible chore. It has never been easy but now! Can it be all the caffeine that used to circulate in my blood?

Why does pork not stack?

This is a game called 'Guess wtf they are talking about". I did not read the name of the forum and the following conversation made my brain die a bit. A butchers convention?

jokomul:
"Forgive me if this has been asked, but I searched and could not find an answer. Why is pork not stackable?  Is there a specific reason? Or was it just overlooked and never fixed? I haven't tried fishing in a couple updates, but if I recall correctly, fish don't stack either."

Beltir:
"No food stacks, because otherwise I could run around with a few stacks of cooked pork and be perfectly safe, and not have to ever worry about running out of pig meat."

soulslayer88:
"Im not sure really. It would make sense because it would be hard to carry around lots of food like that but you can stack chests for some reason so... it doesnt stack because this is video game logic lol."          

Surreal...

Another Wednesday

I have been drinking very little here in Amsterdam and I haven't been drinking at all for about two weeks now. Alcohol, that is. My body tries compensating for the absent stressor by inducing me to drink more coffee and by thus giving me headaches anyway. It was only by chance that I was spared when I accidentally bought decaffeinated coffee. Kicking addictions since 2012.

I have also learned why the Dutch ride their bikes during torrential weathers and don't carry an umbrella. National pride, I was told, is at stake: if one refuses getting soaked he is declared to be made of sugar.

The tour of revelations (contd.)

Today once again I have embarked on my weekly Friday-bike-tour-of-revelations. With a camera! Not the best day for taking pictures, I thought, all grey and dark and threatening to start raining any minute. And I was completely right, of course - the pictures turned out to be awful and blurry (that's also because half of them I took while riding the bike). But anyways. The day before a spoke to a reasonable study abroad and we were complaining to each other how it's getting a bit depressing, probably because of the lack of sunlight, and she said yes, of course, with this unpredictably ominous weather one is bound to stay indoors more that would be considered normal. So I thought it was about time to learn to ignore what the outside looks like. To the detriment of the quality of pictures, that is.

So today I was asked for directions to the Central Station. This happens to me in every new place and very early on and never once yet I have failed to provide the directions. That's just because a place being new and me having a moderate map fetish go very well together. Another question is why I am constantly being asked. When I was a bit younger and more naive I used to think that's because I looked like a local. Here is a better theory: I seem to act like a local. When I walk alone I tend to be in a hurry, and the more destination-less the walk is the more in a hurry I am. This, it seems, to the outside eye appears as if I really know where I'm going (and what can be easier than looking like you know where you are going when you don't particularly care where you are going?).

Here's another revelation. It seemed surprising at first that there are so many Subways around, as many as McDonalds if not more. The solution, it dawned on me today, must lie in the dietary habits of the Dutch having just one warm meal a day.

Two encounters with unlucky celebrities also. I passed by the house where Anne Frank lived and stopped by the park in which vicinity Theo van Gogh was killed to take a picture of "The Scream" placed there in his memory (below).

Now to the pictures.

What I see every day.

Every day.

De Schreeuw. Theo and the freedom of speech.

This is what I see when I'm riding a bike.

Museumplein

A successful city-rebranding effort. They want less sex-drugs-rocknroll and more nice and cozy things.

I've heard meta-commenting on meta-picture-taking is in vogue again.

More water.

Theo

Today I have learned that I live five minutes away from the place where Theo van Gogh was assassinated.