Tuesday, October 31, 2000

23:59 Last minute note
It's that alien Halloween thing again. We don't celebrate it in Brazil, in spite of the cultural colonialism brought to us by the U.S.A. I remeber first being aware of Halloween as a child while reading loads of Charlie Brown comics.

A person once wrote:

our plan
is drop a lot of odd objects
onto your country
from the air

and some of this objects will be useful
and some of them will just be
odd

by proving that these oddities
were produced by a people
free enough to think of making them
in the first place
the U.S. helps
not harms
developing nations
by using their natural resources
and raw materials

Thank you
One other thing we don't celebrate back home: thanksgiving. There's a semi-dead holiday called Ação de Graças but it comes and goes unnoticed and has no attached celebration to it (as far as I know).



When I think of thanksgiving I think of Christina Ricci: first in Addams Family Values when Wednesday Addams takes the role of a vengeful Pocahontas in the summer camp play (and roasts the pilgrims in a spit). Later, on The Ice Storm she played the politically engaged teenager trying to subvert the suburban family dinner by bringing up indians and Vietcongs as topics in her thanksgiving prayer.

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Sunday, October 29, 2000

22:53 I am full o cold, the storm outside submarine knocking at the door. I am leaving. Fall. See you tomorrow.
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21:48 Not I.
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20:31 The house is empty - again.
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Saturday, October 28, 2000

11:16 [My friend Paul Adair is visiting Amsterdam this weekend]

Three independent sections
(two nights ago)
I was in a big vacation house with some friends. It seemed slightly like the house where I first lived (until I was five) and also like some of the places where I spent vacations back in Brazil. Sort of roomy and with a big internal patio, this one. I notice there are curtain rails here and there, placed awkwardly. They are white curtains, made of very thick and glossy plastic and they are all drawn open. I ask a friend who is sitting at the patio with me: 'What are these for?' and he replies 'Well, sometimes the place is too full or people need a bit of privacy - then you can close the curtains and divide the house into three totally independent sections.'
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Wednesday, October 25, 2000

08:46 ...and you will find
The scripts for searching the latenightpool archives have been updated to work with the new host. Good.
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Tuesday, October 24, 2000

23:27 Zzzzzzz
Just in from a long walk with my friend Fred Ross after dinner.
Arrived very early this morning, with a cold and feeling all confused since I sort of skipped a day: it was a night flight, except the night itself lasted less than 4 hours. The combination cold + jetlag is giving a dreamy edge to being back.

Interesting detail: I was finishing reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead just as the plane landed in Schiphol. Pretty symbolic.

The book reproduces the traditional Tibetan scripture read aloud to the dying to help them attain liberation during the successive stages of the death process. These can also be interpreted as the structure behind the big transitions that happen during one's life, and from this point of view the description of each step is very illuminating.

The reading starts when the breathing stops (the bardo of the moment before death) and ends seven days later when, if liberation wasn't attained during one of the earlier stages, the deceased should be ready to enter a new body (the bardo of becoming). Here's a few curious fragments:

"O son of noble family, now the signs and characteristics of the continent where you are going to be born will appear, so recognize them. Examine where you are going to be born and choose the continent.

"If you are going to be born in the northern continent, Unpleasant Sound, you will see a lake adorned with cattle or with trees. Recognize them as signs of taking birth, and do not enter there. Althought it has long life and merits, dharma does not flourish there, so do not enter.

See also:
October 12, 2000 (09:19): The interzone
June 3, 2000 (03:00): How does it grow?
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Sunday, October 22, 2000

16:07 'We have a lot in common. We both like soup.'
Two days ago I went to see Best in Show, the ultra-funny film by Christopher Guest. I hadn't enjoyed American humor that much since David Byrne's True Stories. Mind-blowing performances from actors obviously having a lot of fun (Guest's films are unscripted).
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16:04 How far can you go?
Thinking of my return to Amsterdam tomorrow evening.
Two city experiences couldn't be any more different. In Montreal all my days have been sunny, even when they started really dark and grey. Design is barely present, architecture is mostly shy and there is a mountain to give you natural orientation and a sense of permanence (it also previews the season changes). Buildings announce apartments to rent, sometimes in several floors. Rent is cheap.

And still...
I am very happy to go back home. I travelled quite a lot the last few months and all I want now is to go back and stay, focus on new work and new ideas. There's a lot of energy and good company to do that with.
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15:43 Annelys de Vet's lecture at the UQAM was really, really good. She presented herself as a designer who copies other designers and proceeded to show how exactly she copied and who she copied from. While doing that she name-dropped many other Dutch designers (mostly also present and giving lectures on previous or subsequent days), giving the locals a good-humored impression of the Amsterdam design scene.
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Friday, October 20, 2000

14:38 I am up early today: leaving now to meet Annelys de Vet who will be presenting her work at the Université du Québec à Montréal.
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04:21 As heard on TV: to my surprise the music of Amon Tobin is also the soundtrack to not only one but two network TV commercials (BMW and Coca-Cola).
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Monday, October 16, 2000

19:37 Roadside posting
Thanks to Richard's laptop+mobile connection!

Sunday, October 15, 2000

16:02 Hello again
The latenightpool is back online. Just in time: we'll all be driving up to a cottage where there's little chance to connect until late next week. See you then.
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Saturday, October 14, 2000

16:31 Yesterday:
Late breakfast somewhere unknown with Mike and Sam / walk through the hilly Park Mont-Royal next to McGill University (first time face to face with burning, glowing autumn trees) / visit to the Canadian Center for Architecture / home / Polish dinner (first time face to face with pierogis) / drinks downtown.

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15:46 Now (and then)
Very grey and cozy morning, I am sitting on little M's couch, laptop on my lap, everyone else still asleep. From where I sit I see the building on the opposite side of Sherbrooke street. It's a revalidation hospital. A grey-haired lady on a blue neglige is standing on her room's balcony. I think: it's as sad a day to be in the hospital as it is a cozy one to be at home. I think: some other day, some other hospital somewhere else and that could be me, looking at a building across the street where someone sits on a couch. I wave twice. She's smoking.
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15:29 Just woke up from a dream where me and Richard had to help a group of people cross a very dangerous gate in the shape of an inverted guillotine. There was a videogame feeling in the air: it wasn't obvious how the violent mechanism of the gate was triggered so we had to learn by trying out, by risking. Our job was to hold the thick serrated blades down while people crossed to the other side (the place was somehow like a railroad crossing). The dream ended as a woman lost both her hands just a few centimeters away from me. No guilt of splashing blood though, in spite of the horrible tension in the air.
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Friday, October 13, 2000

14:10 Solidarity
It's nice to know I am not alone - Geegaw is also having its ups and downs, is spite of Nina running her site from a server at home.

In the meanhwile I am still waiting to have the Latenightpool fully back online. Problems with migrating hosts include even an unreadable fax (?!?!) with all the my new FTP account info. Now in Canada, I have yet more trouble getting in contact with the new provider (and to think that e-mail and he web should be totally oblivious of geographical/timezone issues).
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02:46 Today: great weather and a nice swim at the pool of the Montreal Olympic Stadium :-)

Thursday, October 12, 2000

15:19 The interzone

... along with the six realms, we should have some understanding of the basic idea of bardo: 'bar' means in between, and 'do' means island or mark; a sort of landmark which stands between two things. It is rather like an island in the midst of a lake. The concept of bardo is based on the peroid between sanity and insanity, or the period between confusion and the confusion just about to be transformed into wisdom; and of course it could be said of the experience which stands betwen death and birth. The past situation has just occurred and the future situation has not yet manifested itself so there is a gap between the two. This is basically the bardo experience.
Chögyam Trungpa's commentary on The Tibetan Book of the Dead

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Sunday, October 08, 2000

15:13 Growing:
At the same time the new site for the Oude Braak studio (in cooperation with Fred and Gabrielle) is starting to come to life. Airplant.nl will be online in December - when that happens we will be having a little party to celebrate.

(Looking back, this relates to something that was happening already in June.)
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14:32 Reviewing:



Cool news: the project Paul Perry and I have been discussing for a while has now its own domain name. Reviewthislife.com has been registered yesterday. The cooperation feels very good and I am curious as to what will come out of it.
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Saturday, October 07, 2000

17:41 Housing in Amsterdam (I)

09:22 Fun With Time
by Ben Greenman

On the subway, set your watch one hour behind. Pretend that an hour is 100 million years, and that you are in the Cenomanian Age. Look around for dinosaurs, particularly hadrosaurs.

Find an ordinary kitchen timer and set it for three minutes. At the conclusion of the three minutes, divorce your wife or husband. If you are not married, marry the first available person, reset the timer, and repeat the exercise.

Each time the minute hand overlaps the hour hand, pretend that the hour hand has disappeared. As quickly as possible, work yourself into a panic imagining a world with no hours, only minutes.

The next time you feel happy, look at a clock and note how long it takes until you are no longer happy.

When a friend asks you what time it is, say, "Time to take off my watch and put it in my pocket." Then take off your watch and put it in your pocket.

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Thursday, October 05, 2000

09:47 In de Gloria
Today's Gabrielle's birthday! She got a very appropriate big present from the remaining eight nerds and a TV-guide subscription from me (Gabrielle is one of the few highly TV-educated Dutch people I know)

It's alive. It's called Don.
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