Bombay Beach

Have you heard of Bombay Beach?


Well, I saw it the other day and it was quite an experience. I found it ... well, puzzling. Somehow really disconcerting, because of all the conflicting feelings it expresses.
The blur of reality and non-reality and the instability of the boundary between them keeps nagging you all the time.
And you’re shocked at how horrible everything is and at the same time shocked that they seem to be coping somehow. And you keep wondering: Why do the lives of these fucked up people look and sound so beautiful, so poetic? Why do they have choreographies and soundtracks? You suddenly find yourself somehow envying the romanticism of their utter hopelessness. And at the same time it makes you feel sick inside because all the good things are probably fictitious addendums or results of the fictionalising.

When something makes you feel so weird, it’s probably good art. But I don’t even know if I liked it.

I am so over the early 19th century!

I’m really reluctant to write the historical context part of my dissertation because I just DO NOT WANT to repeat all those platitudes about changes happening around 1800 and lost securities and sudden self-consciousness and what not being the reason FOR EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED. That sort of thing makes the most tiresome reading ever. Also everybody knows about it plus it can’t be really true, which is a weird combination of facts.
Ugh.
18 days left of this madness, and I better be finished in time.

Writing on Election Day.

I’ve been good today. Writing by hand hurts like hell after about three pages, but it really works wonders for introducing some much needed order and clarity into a chaotic manuscript (or more acurately, computoscript, actually!)

Also, a cat picture, because I can:

They were being the cutest the other day.

Oh yes, and a shout out to my non-existent American followers. It’s election day! Go do something about that. And remember that some things are meant for being played baseball with, and other things are meant for being voted for. They almost never overlap!

Chai child.

First snow today! But gone already.

I’m drinking very sugary chai, eating cake and procrastinating productively (clean and reorganise power-cord and usb-cable box and spice cabinet: check). What are Sundays for if not that?





My schedule says they’re for having already written at least 27 pages of the thesis.
My schedule is a buzz-kill.

The importance of profession for identity.

I know so many people whom I’ve never asked what they do for a living. Their profession never entered into my perception of them as persons, or into our ‘relationship’ which centered around other, more immediate concerns.

On the other hand here am I, and here are most of my peers, going slightly crazy about what they’re going to do for a living and how it will affect their lives - and that is, in more than just a financial sense. And I think quite justly so. I mean it’s obvious that you wouldn’t spend most of your time doing something that you thought wasn’t congruent with who (you think) you are.

But arguably, a job is not the same job when two different people do it. So you’re always you, whatever job you do, you’re simply you-doing-that-job.

And moreover, people are more than their jobs. (Arguably, some are less. But let’s curb the misanthropy for a while ...)


I don’t know what I’m getting at with these paragraphs ... Possibly preparing mentally for and rationalising doing that one job that will definitely not be me. Possibly just blathering.

BRB.

Dark kids die less unexpectedly.

Various Goals (Of Various Grades Of Feasibility)

1. Know and make all possible variations of lentil soup. (Here’s one that looks delish.)

2. Go for a walk. Autumn leaves and all.

3. Help make books. Like, dans la vie.

4. Hate less.

5. Knit a hat out of my cream coloured speckled yarn.

6. Read Russians and criticism of science.

7. Be kinda dark.

8. Travel to a different continent.

9. Figure out what the hell is going on with my taste in music. Make some music!

10. Build something. Out of wood and metal and stuff.

I sing songs to myself.

Some words:
Parsley. Mountain Goats. Cold morning. Tired. Other things. Breakability. Performative. Sentence. Season.



I’d really like to know why I so rarely do the things that make me so happy I could cry.

Hey, good-looking ...

Looking forward to my lunch date with this sexy tupperware container.

Hey butcher!

What
s
your
name?


Hey. Sometimes I wish I could just permanently regress to my teenage self and happily obsess about things (fictional or semi-fictional persons/events) to a frighteningly intense degree.

The relativism, scepticism and insecurity of my adult mind can get rather aggravating. Sometimes I'm afraid that I'll eventually bungee back and join some cult just because I'm so direly starved for faith (in the broader sense).


You can listen to this song, because it's in my brain right now. Please avoid watching the video. I'm sorry, I really couldn't find a less irksome one. I've always loved the way the apocalypse and or general carnage feature in Pulp lyrics. I'm quite apocalypse friendly in general. I guess it's a not-quite-part-of-this-world-thingy.

End of Estivation

Two days ago it was 30°C, but today, when I cycled to work, the tarmac on Bennoplatz was littered with the floury remains of chestnuts crushed by car tyres and the breeze nipped my knuckles and the tips of my ears. I saw a girl wearing a knitted hat, a parka and desert boots and the cawing of the crows had quite a different ring to it under a sky that now wasn't blue but approximately the colour of brushed aluminium.
Perhaps, I thought to myself, as I navigated through the oncoming traffic in Mariannengasse, I will have to buy gloves soon.

People are posting comments on social media sites, like: "Good weather, at last", no doubt in the hope to receive incredulous replies regarding their edgy and unconventional taste in weather.

Autumn seems to have hit the land, hard.

I seem to be okay with it, and the prospect that the library where I spend most of my time will no longer be sweltering and stuffy; and the fact that my bed is white and pink and infinitely comfy when the sky is grey and the rain is hitting the window panes; and the way hot black strong tea is always ready to be your instant comfort when you need it (a thing that only really works when there is actual, physical cold to be thawed); oh yes, and that there is an endless supply of free squash and pumpkins this year, waiting to be turned into delicious autumny soup. Simple comforts. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
It is also a fact that it is much easier to turn oneself into a studious hermit, and to huddle, entrenched, behind stacks of books when the outside world seems less inviting a place than one's own study.

And maybe occasionally, on Sundays, the grey will yield to something like this ...
That would indeed be quite ideal.

Attempt attempt.

I kinda hate that I’d kinda like to own this book.

Where are your kyne, people?

Initialisation Ritual.

This is where I occasionally work.
These are boxes full of photos of pictures.

What I do is I split the continuous information of pictures up into searchable, verbal information. Digitalisation.

(Quick, before you miss a turn.)
Input Input.

Digitalisation means fingering.



Today: Manuscript Illuminations.
Kiss.