Tuesday, August 28, 2001

14:06 Escrevendo pra Teodora.

Oi benhê!

Saudades.

Voltaste?

Estou selecionando uns slides de uma artista prum trabaio e lembrei, pela primeira vez em anos, daquelas sessões que a gente fazia no ateliê da Antonia de Queiroz, lembra?

Era uma delícia. Eu pegava os slides na biblioteca do MAC ou do Goethe ou do consulado americano. Minha vida era muito boa, já naquela época. Eu ia nas bibliotecas e eu nadava no Pacaembú e eu não tinha um centavo pra nada. Não ponho os pés numa biblioteca jea faz um tempinho, que coisa. Internet resolve bem, talvez até melhor, mas é diferente. Nao é um lugar, uma instituição, e não tem cheiro de arquivo.

Não vejo a hora de você chegar. O apto vai estar pronto e quem sabe não vemos uns slides juntos, tipo homenagem aos dias que se foram. Foram?

beijos de montão

ro

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Thursday, August 23, 2001

00:17 Everything is very well organized.



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00:09 Today I was offered a teaching job at the Rietveld Academy. I couldn't accept (too much already planned for the coming months) but I thought it was nice to be asked. Also today I've met briefly with Teike, Irma, Paul.
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Wednesday, August 22, 2001

09:00 Woke up from a night full of dreams where people were extremely kind and trustworthy. I was in London, giving a short speech at an institute, and a gray-haired woman called Julie (or looking like some actress called Julie) stands up and comments on what I just talked about and we barely have to exchange looks to know we like each other very much. No danger. Before leaving the city I come back to the institute to ask for her full name. The girls at the reception desk are helpful and warm.
In another dream I am climbing/hiking through a very steep and narrow road-corridor in a place that felt mediterranean. Lots of effort and nature. My friend Claudio G. from Brazil talks to me. His voice does. He is in a restaurant and asks me to join him when I finish my walk. I think: 'this will take a while'. After several attempts to find a continuation to what seemed like the end of the cave-road, I realize I am a meter or two from the tables where people are eating. I see the counter and the cash-register. White spotless tablecloths and people chatting and the sound of cutlery. It's daytime and the air is fresh. I just walk out of my remote road into the place, feeling awkward to realize how close they were from each other. I join Claudio's table, he has several friends with him, they welcome me in a warm, friendly way. No danger.
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Monday, August 20, 2001

11:43 "Good architects are born rich or marry well" is not only something commonly said in architecture schools. It is also true (according to Aaron Betsky, director of the Nederlands Architectuur Instituut).
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Sunday, August 19, 2001

21:54 Holy irony! From the new aparment I can hear, twice a week, the services of the Pentecostal Church that rents the basement of the buiding. Nasty detail: it is a Brazilian church. There's a lot of aleluia and enthusiastic (hysterical) clapping. Of all weird church possibilities, of all languages, of all cities, of all buildings. Maar goed.
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21:17 By the way: I am posting from home, pictures and all.
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21:08 Saturday evening: the flu I've been trying to escape from the last week or two finally got me. Last night I was in bed at 21:30, feeling totally wrecked, feeling homesick, feeling it all in a very exagerated way. A while later I had what felt like a very high fever and it seemed to last the entire length of my sleep. Combined with the heavy storm pouring outside it made my night a very weird one - kind of spectacular. I woke up this morning all soaked and tired and remained dizzy and grumpy all day. Like a very very old man.
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20:47 Last Friday evening: got a phone call from Dan B. who I never see but like very much. I was feeling not so well so I skipped his nice invitation to go have a beer. On my way home I passed by the supermarket and met Ellis, my roomate from the days when I had just arrived in Holland. We hadn't talked - or practically seen each other - in years.
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20:42 Last Friday morning: I found out a line of tiny eggs trapped in the space between the two glass panes of my window. I wondered what creature laid those eggs, when, and how? Will they be preserved forever in the airtight construction of the window?




I was waiting for the UPC man who came to install the cable box. I showed him the eggs. He suggested they may have come from the factoty, that they have been embedded between the two sheets of glass since the window was fabricated.
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Thursday, August 09, 2001

13:58 While zapping past Arte last Tuesday I caught the last bit of Futuro, a documentary on the rise and fall of the portable plastic house designed in 1968 by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen.


image: Nordische Filmtage Lübeck

Futuro was originally designed to be an après-ski cabin. It was delivered fully furnished and accomodated eight people. It seems that the oil crisis in the 70's compromised the very optimistic mass-production plans that would make it "cheap enough to house all people around the earth".
Only twenty Futuro houses were ever built.
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13:36 I want to write more. You see, until I have a computer at home again I can't seem to be in the right - hmm - wavelength. Right now I keep posting sort of in between other pressing tasks and that means quick notes and not much reflection. There are many more relevant things to write about.
As a temporary solution I will probably bring home my old Mac, at least until I manage to get something more compact. The mythical flat-screen iMac would be the right thing for me but well, it just doesn't exist, and the iBook still feels a bit too expensive. So I guess I'll wait until Apple releases new models, of until I change my mind about the the current ones.
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Tuesday, August 07, 2001

15:59 Working on a series of illustrations for a book. The plan is to create a series of hybrid creatures by juxtaposing two or more parts that will be 'sewn' together at the spine of the book, the line where the left and right pages meet.

While researching on Jina – the Jain god that (I suspect) has plants growing up his legs – I found this sentence:

Beware of Internet
Not everything on the web is spiritual or knowledge oriented.

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Monday, August 06, 2001

18:12 Richard returned from Canada with two unlabeled videocassetes: one had an episode of Get Smart (the title sequence was even better than I remembered) and the other the already mentioned final episode of Voyager, very entertaining and all but full of sloppy time travel loose ends. The mature, stern Admiral Janeway looked exactly like my mom (she really did) but then American and full of hairspray.
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17:42 Meanwhile in the new apartment I am amazed at how good it feels to have a radically simplified life. I also ponder that most people my own age – 35 – are moving or planning to move to a bigger, possibly own house. Did I rewind (living-with-the-parents situation) or did I fast-forward (living-in-an-old-folks-home situation)? Reduce to the max. Olé.

In any event what I expect to achieve is some peace of mind, a body a bit less lazy, some more time and concentration to study the things I want to study. Can a house help me with that? I think so yes.
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17:31 Did you notice that Mr. LaLaMut is back from Beirut? On his notes he mentions drinking coffee with cardamom seeds - something I used to do quite often, back when I was still living in Brazil. That's because Moa, my former lover, was from a Lebanese-Brazilian family and we used to have regular Sunday lunches at his parent's home. Dona Odette, his mother, cooked the most delicious Lebanese dishes and wrapped it up with the famous coffee with cardamom, followed by liqueur served by Sr. Manir. The coffee was very strong and unfiltered and there was always some powder left at the bottom of the cup.
Moa's grandmother, Dona Alice, was also present every once in a while. She had been born and raised in Lebanon, and travelled to Brazil, all by herself, at the age of twelve (around the late 1930's I guess). She once taught me how to make Hummus bei Tahini, and complimented me when she tasted my first results - and I was really proud of that.
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