LATE-NIGHT POOL

Sunday, May 27, 2001

16:41 Finale
Voyager's final episode was broadcast last week in the US and Canada (see the promo). The series started pretty much at the time when I left Brazil, seven years ago. Quite appropriately, I associate it with exploration, adventure, discovery. I will miss it and so will Richie, I'm sure.

On the other hand the new series Enterprise is in the making and will have the very beefy Scott Bakula (Quantum Leap, American Beauty) as Captain Jonathan Archer. Think what you want.
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16:20 Last night: very good time at the roof of Kees's boat toasting to Oskar's birthday. Really really nice.

The night before that one: I dreamt I had found / rented / bought a very nice new house, kind of compact but very new and cool-looking. On one side a full-glass wall, facing a big lake (the mirror-like lake water touching the glass, almost an extension of the floor). The opposite walls were white with no windows but I knew there were big mountains behind it, mountains like in Swiss mountains. the whole house was like a small pavillion, a very horizontal and light space. No city, no streets, no neighbours, just a flat, quiet place to live between a wide lake and immense mountains. My mom was visiting. I was happy.

Remember: Claudio's apartment on Rua Juatuba, São Paulo.
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15:43 The results: I just finished talking on the phone with J. Tuerlinckx who was quite surprised with my call (see the second previous entry). 'Very strange', she said, mentioning some coincidences involving the timing and the subject of my call.
It seems we will soon meet in person.
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15:24 On Terry Gilliam's buraucratic nightmare Brazil, the movie (1985) there's a governmental organ named 'Ministry of Information retrieval'. When the film became available in Brazil (the country) this term was translated as Ministério do Resgate de Informações, which translates back more or less like 'Ministry of the Rescue of Information'.
I find that so funny. Do you?
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14:37 Finding old data
So! It was there after all (see previous entry). On a web page with the schedule of the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels I found the precise dates of the exhibition and I remembered planning the trip in a hurry and going alone, with a rented a car and in a sort of a hurry because the exhibition was ending that weekend.
I visited it on the very last day, and that was September 27, 1998.
This is the page of my notebook including the contact info of Joëlle Tuerlinckx, who shot the video I am looking for.

I called once, the number is busy.
I wonder what sort of archiving system she has, if the footage can be found again, how long will that take.
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14:01 Searching for old data
Searching for a phone number I wrote down long ago while visiting an exhibition in Brussels (see entry of July 1, 2000). This number, if found, will lead me to some video footage of myself wearing/experimenting with some of the artwork of brazilian artist Lygia Clark.

Review this life
Hoping to find this note I dug back all my notebooks from the last 7 years - at least all the ones I could find. Going through them was enjoyable, interesting but also a bit irritating. We all know the nice warmth of notebooks, their texture and smell, and how the handwriting itself conveys a lot of extra information about what's written, how it was written. Today I thought: it's all very nice but I want to search. No, better, I want to find. And I couldn't.
As it often happens when one searches for something (digitally or not) I found lots of other interesting things, memories, records, milestones, but not that one phone number that will bring back the footage that is rare and very relevant to my current plans. That one book, the one that cobers the summer of 1998, is missing or hidden somewhere.
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Saturday, May 26, 2001

14:47 We Will Remember It For You

(We will even congregate under the moonlight to help you remember.)
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Thursday, May 24, 2001

23:47 Of Helyx Helyx one knows not.
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23:31 Newly added to my Visor: a Thesaurus (following a little dinner talk with Gabriëlle).

Now searching for e-books, and curious about reading a full novel on a minimini screen. Will it feel more precious, more intimate, more private? Will the memory of the story be any different than the one from a regular book?

(rereading the last sentence: typical me, not one bad expectation - one wonders how have I managed so far)

A quick search delivered the following titles, now ready to install: Shelley's Frankenstein, Verne's 20.000 leagues under the sea and a short story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Eva lives inside her cat. Oh and I must confess: the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition.

Links, suggestions of other available titles are welcome.
Things searched but not (yet) found: Lessing, Beckett, P.K. Dick, Sade.

Also experimenting a bit with text-only web browsing with the excellent Eudora Internet Suite for the Palm OS (connecting via IR using my mobile phone).

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22:54 !
So Stewart decided to close his Sylloge. Visitors now find a bead tree, a personal note and a good site archive indexing the_past (and giving easy access to one of my favourite entries). I know I will miss waiting and waiting for the appearance of the tiny aliens. I already do.
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22:41 Oba Oba
Yesterday I sent a message to many of my Portuguese speaking friends asking for updated addresses and phone numbers. The answers are trickling in. Long live e-mail.
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Monday, May 14, 2001

22:25 Visited Stewart and Paul using my Visor. Cool.
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22:08 Lately I've been doubting my assessment of the last months (last year) in which I see all these transition periods opening themselves like brackets, and before each transition chunk closes down another one of a different nature begins, brackets inside brackets, all opening, none closing. It makes some sort of algebric sense, ja, but it's been happening so consistently and for so long (it seems so long) that I now start feeling that maybe I am missing the point - there has to be another way of seeing this. The current model piles up expectation on top of expectation and implies some sort of climax in layers that sounds unlikely to exist. On the other hand I do feel like a more patient man somehow. And while I am 'waiting' lots of interesting stuff has been happening. So what am I missing?
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21:39 Met Paul in Den Haag and Rotterdam, a lot of talking and walking and taxis and pizza and sand sculptures scattered along the beach. There were people with bodies bouncing on trampolines. I lost my phone. The pizza was excellent. Got a better phone one day later.
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21:27 Jeez how quiet this place has become.
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Wednesday, May 02, 2001

16:51 Royal Mail: Oskar and I received a letter from the Queen today (posted in Maastricht). A bit late for the festivities but full of cute details:

The text mentions our condecoration to the order of the Netherland Ant and proposes a celebration followed by a homemade Dutch meal. I'm in.
Note the bottlecaps with the portraits of the current and future majesties.

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Tuesday, May 01, 2001

13:49 So. It seems that after long hours of party and booze (see yesterday's entry), there was no way for the thousands of orange people to get home. The Dutch Railways - chaotic enough on regular days - had twelve hours of interrupted service. Everybody was drunk, everybody was angry, and riots broke off while policemen tried to evacuate the Centraal Station, tear gas and all.

photo: Volkskrant website

It seems that the railways had to shut down the service around noon after the emergency brake buttons were being used (for the fun!) on several trains. When that happens, the train doors can be opened by the passengers - and that was when the partygoers decided to step out and walk (over the rails) the remaining part of their trip to Amsterdam.

I spent the whole day in front of the computer - and on my way home, ca. 3am, I biked through what looked like a war zone, and over a sea of glass from the destroyed busstops.

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