occam, thanks for your razor

when you get a painful vaccine in your arm the world, which was waiting for this particular event to happen, goes mad: everyone seems to hit you right there, where it hurts, like they had been always planning for it. 

but it's not some conspiracy, it's all about where you put your attention or where your awareness is (temporarily) higher. 

and as my senses are usually as acute as apendicitis just before the (vermiform) appendix bursts, everything that happens around me contains some message, some reference to my mood and my feelings. especially in times of melancholy, the universe  seems to get me. (with a careful insertion of mockery laughter)

it's surely a self-preservation mechanism for the self-centric eccentrics, who know they are meaningless in the grand scheme but muster dimwit hope that, somehow, they're not. 

so, ok, then the radio is not really sympathizing with me, but i don't dislike living by means of this magical delusion.

summer bummer

(anne emond)

good i'm going back to rain. very good. how quickly we forget.

initials B.B. and M.E.

What do Mircea Eliade and Brigitte Bardot have in common? is a question anyone with a little bit of time and a little bit of imagination can answer, because it is obscure and unimportant so you can make up anything you want for the sake of conversation. And it's the kind of thing you could easily talk about at 42 degrees celsius. Especially inside your head, using different voices and maybe even different accents. But how B.B. and M.E. visited me on the same day to deliver an important message is something else. Or wait, no, it's just what I said above.

B.B. says/sings that she has a lover during the day and a husband during the night and then she exchanged the lover for a husband and got a new lover and so on and then it stops cause she's not in the mood to take another lover in the meantime (because eventually she gets old and cares more about stray dogs and their rescue and maybe putting ribbons in her hair and lots of make-up on).

J'ai pris l'amant pour mari 

Et un amant pour amant 

Qui deviendra mon mari 

Aussi longtemps 

Que je n'aurai pas envie 

De prendre un nouvel amant 

Qui remplacera mon mari 

En attendant

It's deep french pop sailing in shallow waters.

Now M.E.. Some hours before this song came into my ears I was re-reading M.E.'s Noaptea de Sanziene, where Stefan, who wants to live outside time (with a capital T) doesn't understand why he has fallen in love with Ileana while he loved his wife, Ioana.

Where can such love go? Anna Karenina, Tristan and Isolda? It would be too sad. A love that replaces another, an adultery that would be just like any other, born from Time, eroded by Time, destined to death, like any creature born out of death that returns into death. If I can't love one the same way I love the other one, what's the point of this new love? Why did I meet Ileana? Why did I fall in love with her? I've always loved Ioana; from the moment I saw her I understood that I've always loved her, that this love was destined to me. Then why did I fall in love with another? Only to sleep with her? If this new, unexpected, unsolicited love would only lead to replacing Ioana with Ileana then it would make no sense.

And on the dusty train platform, looking at the people running like mad to get on the train that wouldn't leave for another 15 minutes, this idea that we only replace one love with another, mechanically, meaninglessly, brainlessly (but not without hope), seemed extremely revolutionary, even intelligent. I don't consider it such anymore, however, it's the kind of awakening that can never come post-priori simply because we give too much meaning to our actions and attractions.

Who cares. 

That is, Dr. Who cares.

(cause he has two hearts and is a time traveller). 

thanks for axing

but i still don't know.

lisa says on a night like this

this sample of bad filming is to be looked at with wonder, for it is not the bad filming that matters, but something else. the man in the center, ok, in the blurred center, the stiffer one, is lou reed. himself! he's 70, has big biceps, he's on tour (or was?) and it was great to hear him and see him (stand unbendable) from the back of the room, the best place to be at so the illusion created by his ultra reedish voice would not have to endure even the slightest doubt at seeing his new (sic!) exterior. it's not shallow, or it is, but it is only because i want to preserve him in my mind like this.

but you see the woman in the up right corner? she's called joan as policewoman, and she opened for lou reed. she must've thought of herself as quite the entertainer, cause she spoke between each song (and there were many, each like a little drop of poison), in a soft porn voice, like a housewife who works part time for some erotic hotline, her first few songs sounded like the mating sounds of some species of chicken, mumbled words were only hiding up the ineptitude of the lyrics, some of which went like this: you'll start your engines like a virgin as long as you jump the ride or don't you know i'm your woman and you are my man? or I just want your love / I want it now / I want your face inside of my mind [...] ‘Cause I don't come with a manual. / No, I lost it long ago.

yes, she has definitely lost her manual, her manual ability to slap herself off stage because she is embarrassing, yet somehow, there is always an amusing dimension to a total lack of personal sense of the ridiculous. 

but she breaks just like a little girl

if drawings had ears we'd play her some bob dylan and she'd stop crying.

spring fever

“It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want — oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!” Mark Twain

                                                                                                                             

sometimes the disease fits the symptoms so you accept the diagnosis. sometimes the observations fit the theory so you think you're validating it. when i get tired of being wrong, when i get tired of uncertainty or indecision, something. yes. something.  

welcome to this spring

here came spring, real spring, warm spring, may spring, oh yes, and together with its friend the wind it spreads joy or pollen, dust and little particles that make you sneeze, and what better way to wake up than by expelling stuff out your nose and perhaps mouth at speeds ranging between 150 and 900 km/h, i heard this somewhere, such crudeness the morning has when you've got a jet plane coming out of your nose, maybe a race car if not a jet plane, and then it really becomes a race, first sneeze-car in pole position followed closely by another one and another one, you should aim at the window, so they go away and race till they dissolve, or else, if your head is still facing the pillow, they'll be stuck there, in your pillow, racing all day but mostly all night, every night, and you'll hear vruuuuum! vrrrruuuum! when you try to go to sleep and your dreams will become more vibrant, like sitting in a 4d cinema, yuck, yuck like when cheese ball snacks fall into your bag and you can never pick up all of them and they stick together (wouldn't it be so great to be able to expel them like pollen out of your nose?), no, no thank you, welcome, spring, but don't sneeze on my pillow.

reflection

beat it, paulie, 

her breast hid away,

beat it, i don’t want you around,

edgar, listen,

(such a funny name for a breast, edgar)

listen, edgar, 

my name isn’t paulie, 

i don’t have a name, 

but you can call me paulie,

I am really you,

you're looking at yourself,

this is me that is you,

in a mirror, a mirror doesn’t have a name either,

it's everyone she meets,

I am you, she is us,

we are the same.

edgar couldn’t understand.

he was more like a can on the streets of a windy town,

or like a little bully called frank who grows up to be a disco bodyguard,

or like cocoa milk getting cold on the window sill,  

he reacted, but couldn’t understand more than a garden chair would.

breasts are beasts without ‘r’s, 

beasts without hours,

hours without beats,

beats without skips,

skips without hops,

hopes without dreams.

breasts are beasts from dreams skipped in no hour’s beat.

we're going to delphi.

i had done something bad, but not bad bad, more like kid bad, and all these people at this horrible dinner party were playing games in twos and purposely left me out. so i started playing with this cat they had in the house and they were paranoid about it getting killed, and the cat, to piss me off and get me into more trouble, opened the back door somehow, and there, right there, waiting, was this big fat cat who hated her the most and wanted to annihilate it. they started this massive chase and at times cat fur would fly here and there, and i screamed and everyone screamed back at me thinking i'm the boy who cries wolf to take them away from the game, especially this boy i had come with, he was being so silly. but the cat was saved so we left, and outside, on what looked like a building site, some woman asked from afar for directions and i realized we were in india. then i got contact lenses and i was on a bicycle and i couldn't see so well.  

i am as old as i am young

getting old is but an instant.

that instant it takes to finish your breakfast 

- during which time you heard a good story you laughed at

maybe had some muesli

an apple

a coffee with too much sugar -

and then one day you look down at your hands

- the same hands that held the spoon to your muesli

or the apple to your core

or the laughter to your mouth -

and you get scared. you don’t recognize your own hands.

you go to the mirror and you don’t recognize the mirror.

you are in someone else’s house.

so, it has come to this

one day, in class, i couldn't pay attention. it was both the loud chewing of the person next to me (we will call her gluta) and my very sleep deprived irritable self. so i started a paper war. this person, gluta, seemed horrible. i gathered all these creatures to fight her. while i was sitting next to her i couldn't imagine anyone worse than her. i didnt really see her. all i know is that she eats shrimp salad like some people take baths: with loud splishes and splashes and that she speaks like some people fart: with confidence, getting high on the whiffs she got.

(gluta wasnt asian. she uses chopsticks because i cant draw forks.)

i am a haunted home without a house

my mother says parents can give you everything, except for luck. i dont know what luck really is, it's not reliable like sense of humor, it's not even transient like good looks, i really can't say anything certain about it, but it seems to be nice odds, odds in your favor. shifting probability. but then again, everything seems to be just chance. probability. odds. timing.

i did feel lucky many times in my life, like last night, in my dream, when a plane crashed into the building i was going to go into if only i would have found my lipstick in time. i didnt find it, so i didnt go in, so i didnt get squashed by this enormous plane (and i dont even use lipstick in waking life). i dont feel lucky that i have these fears of not finding a place to stay in time (i will be roomless, roofless, rootless from march 1st) turn into plane attacks in my dreams, but i dont feel unlucky, either. 

therefore i will become ruthless and let go of worries that i wont find a place and whatever happens will happen anyway. and if it will be terrible, i guess it will build character?

extremely strange and incredibly fast

yesterday morning, very morning, as i was walking towards the train that would take me to the cinema(s), i noticed my shoe lace was untied. i looked at it and looked away within the same second, simply because after my quick evaluation of the gravity of the situation i have concluded that it wasn't going to necessitate a pit stop.

but all of a sudden a man walking towards me spotted my weakness, stopped, looked me straight in the eye and zoomed in on his own face (like the nemesis of a ninja would) and then made this very strange, almost bird-like whistling noise, and in 3 seconds i was completely surrounded by all the random citizens who happened to be in the streets at that moment and recognized this man's cry. even mothers with their children came, but of course some of them were covering the young one's eyes.

what appeared to be like the oldest man in the circle approached, closing the circle behind him, and said to me in a german for idiots, nein, nein, nicht richtig, schliessen die muntzer oder nein gezucht! i am not an idiot so i didnt understand that, but i saw him pointing at my untied shoe lace so i said schuldigung, tucked it in my shoe and wanted to go about my way, beginning to become aware of the disturbance my shoe lace has caused them. but they wouldnt let me. one of the children who was allowed to look started crying when he saw how i tried to cheat by tucking it in, so his mother had to pull him away from the circle which got a bit more tighter around me. then i remembered the note, the note was going to save me, i pulled it out and handed it to the old man. he read it, sneered and whistled. everyone went away immediately and i was free.

ok, i must confess i might have distorted facts a little bit. it wasnt a note at all, it was my festival badge. no, my passport. no, my copenhagen resident's card. i can't well remember, it was all so extremely strange and incredibly fast.

a nest of angry knees

nate (i mean nature, but we're on nickname terms), in all its generosity, has not bestowed upon me an essential thing, essential only to my current and most exciting interest, and not essential in loose terms. yes. cinema. 

so this generous nate gave me a nest of angry knees and every time i'm in a cinema they go wild. negotiations aren't going well. but everything else is.

going gloriously. 

so dear knees, please, bee-have. 

Ordnung muß sein?

upon arrival in berlin, i met a trickster, the one you are warned about on the side of ticket vending machines in U train stations. he wanted to sell me a ticket. i caught his eye and his accent and asked him if he was romanian which indeed he was. as we started speaking the mother tongue, he didnt want to sell me the ticket anymore, but instead was very helpful with my purchase, giving me directions and generally being very nice. then, on the train, this romanian trumpet duo came in the cart i was in and started playing. we chatted a bit and i thought: berlin is really the place to be romanian. :>

this festival is so big, it's scary. people with accreditation queue from 6 am in front of the festival center to pick up tickets, and it opens at 8.30. i got a tattoo on my hand that will be my mantra for these 10 days, take it as it comes. also because there are so many movies and so many people that it's easiest to just be relaxed about it and open to whatever comes my way. and in postdamer platz, everything comes your way. including trains. which is the only thing you must avoid direct collision with.

to illustrate: yesterday, on festival day -1, going to pick up my accreditation and getting lost on the way, i saw a man with a red berlinale bag and asked him for help. he was going my way so we walked and talked together. he showed me the movie he produced and told me to check it out. we said goodbye and i knew i was ready for anything to happen. 

then i thought, berlin is really the place to be

(for me, now).

and there's a funny coincidence: the travel pass for the period i am here costs as much as the festival pass, and it is only right because the train is a sort of film apparatus and every time i've been on it i've seen scenes of amazing natural beauty with oh so interesting characters. 

"what's the matter for you, joe, i break-a you' face!"

when they say there's a high demand for jobs out there, they aren't kidding. what kind of jobs we're talking about is always a bit in the mist, but i had the privilege of enlightenment tonight, when going for an interview for a student job as a waitress at an italian restaurant in copenhagen. this restaurant owner said, aa, vieni, we eat, we drink, we talk, in italy, we take it easy, so i think, well, ok, in italy they take it easy so i go, we eat, we drink and the he says ok, now we go to my office. and i think, well, that's odd. but i keep cool and think hey, maybe i don't know enough about italian culture or customs. in his office, i notice with irony that he has a security camera and he's basically watching himself, so i ask, with much unnecessary naivety, why?, so he takes this cloth and covers it up. so i say no, no, not at all what i meant. so i think ok, there it is, the worst case scenario unfolding right under my now-like-cocker-spaniel eyes. he keeps talking about how there are so many romanians and bulgarians wanting this job, oh, and the tips, haha, they make more than me, these waiters, haha, and then he stands up and touches my hair and says well, i love-a your-a haircut and touches my shoulder in this hey-i'm-disgusting-and-pathetic-but-i-own-the-restaurant-you-want-to-work-in. so i figure it's really time to split and i say, i'm here only for the waitress job. then i kicked him in the groin and walked out, knocking a chair down on my way, in a successful attempt of showing how i felt about it.

and some say, a job is a job. well, fuh-get about it! 

snow down

it's raining rain and also falling snow. simultaneously. and it's huge snow flakes. as big as the toilet seat. and just like the toilet seat in a house with boys, they will never settle. sit down. stay down. go north of logic and you'll find boys are to be blamed for the lack of snow in this case. go north of korea and you'll find american imperialists to be blamed for the same. this proves nothing. disproves nothing. except, 

erotica

there's an explanation to why i think of my mother when i hear the word erotica - but before i go on i must ask fans of freud to put their hopes into the plastic bin beside them.

my mother's name is rodica. the accent falls on the second (!!) syllable. it is such a romanian name, that if we had ever thought to invent some national heroine she would have been called, undoubtedly, rodica. (ada milea knew this, too.) it's funny how, in the many years of being aware of both her name and the word erotic, i never thought of the similarity. till one day, f. said "i forgot your mother's name again". so i said "it's rodica". so he said "can i call her erotica? like this i can remember". so i said, well, nevermind, i probably said something less interesting. i should've stopped at the previous line, shouldn't i?

zzzzzzzz.

womankind

i witnessed this conversation at a party, and when it will happen anywhere else but at a party (or perhaps also at a transvestite anonymous meeting) it will mean something. what, i don't know.

boy: hej, man

girl: hej, man

boy: or woman!

girl: ...

boy: or girl!

girl: ...

boy: or man

girl: hej, man

the sun is the same

(in a relative way)

(a personal reminder in a sort of public spot)