Sunday, October 28, 2001

10:15 Entertain us



Moulin Rouge with Stefan last Friday. Oooohh what a good film. Never mind the genre: if you are able to enjoy good editing you must be able to enjoy this one.

Eloquence \El"o*quence\, n. [F. ['e]loquence, L. eloquentia, fr. eloquens. See Eloquent.] 1. Fluent, forcible, elegant, and persuasive speech in public; the power of expressing strong emotions in striking and appropriate language either spoken or written, thereby producing conviction or persuasion.

Everybody can can can at the orgiastic sequence that introduces the Moulin Rouge itself; the place where the all-knowing crowd is having all-knowing collective pleasure. It's the perfect orgy: everybody knows what to do. Quite something for times like this.
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Thursday, October 25, 2001

14:16 No, I am telling you, I do not live on Febo and alcohol.
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13:42 A jolly good fellow



Had a long, pleasant dinner with Bruno last night. Our sake-pouring technique developed as we talked: from housing to the way some fish look to weblogs to cultural borders to pools and research plans to entrepeneurship and stuff. We should do this more often.
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Tuesday, October 23, 2001

19:51 Legendary
I've been e-mailing today with my nephew Luis Henrique (aka Santo do Correio Eletrônico), who has been an adventurous gourmet since his early days and is now curious about some things he heard at home about the Dutch fine-cuisine chain Febo. Is it true that some people bite the croquettes and put the half-eaten leftover back into the little ovens, he asks. Nou nou nou. We all know the answer to that.



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17:49 Recently

I
I was walking with Gabriëlle – after a movie or something – a big boulevard that could be the waterfront of Rio / Pozzuoli / Knokke-Heist or that place where Boul. Anspach meets Place de Brouckere – we were happy – I pointed to the sky; the area above us was sunny and clear, but the sky ahead was dark and threatening with dark smoke clouds – the two parts of the sky did not connect in a plausible way – bad supernatural photoshop – bad, bad – then planes coming from several directions explaining the origin of the smoke – no home to come to – destruction all around

II
I was in the glass cabin of some sort of public transport – surface metro or cable car – still inside a building, ready to depart – in Brazil – exlosions outside, fire – trapped.
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15:21 What it was, what it really was, what it came out to be
I spent last weekend dealing with a very tough task: step two of my complex, three-step, slooooow house moving process. Steps two and three involve other people and their schedules, other cities and other timezones. Difficult. I knew that.

I had been postponing it for a long while and, as usual, the procrastination itself added to the heaviness of the job. Being able to postpone it so long has been, in itself, a painfully luxurious situation.

So I sort and select and make decisions and assemble boxes and fill them up with the things that should be kept, and preparing to throw away many bags of other things that are old or unnecessary or expired or excessive. I think of the excess, the excess, the energy, the effort and the money put into what is now being thrown out. I cover the now cleared-up sections of the (former) apartment in plastic and start painting the walls; knowing I should be fast and efficient - all must be ready by Monday morning for when the new bewoner (who's also family) arrives. In spite of the time pressure, as I work I am frequently interrupted by friends who call and pass by, by several calls from far away people and by a few lunch and coffee breaks with travel companion P.A. who is visiting Amsterdam this weekend. It does delay the work but it does not make it any more difficult.

Much to the opposite: by the time I went to bed on Sunday(very late), I realized that the friends were all there to help (some in person and some not) ; that their interruptions were refreshing and gave me support; that the timing of P.A.'s visit was less coincidental than it was ceremonial; and topping it all there was André's last-minute mega-help.

It's a fortunate thing, having these people, noticing I do, thank you.

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Thursday, October 18, 2001

14:51 Associate – Caterina has new design; she is reading Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese writer of many personas; she is writing about subjective time, according to J. H. van den Berg, a Dutch psychologist I did not know of; she lives in Canada.
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12:34 Something is happening in California
From the San Francisco Chronicle (via NextDraft):

Berkeley -- On a close vote of its City Council, Berkeley last night became the first city in the nation to call for a halt to the U.S.-led bombing of Afghanistan.
(...)
The council voted on the same day a new Gallup poll showed 92 percent of Americans support the air strikes. And it came in the face of angry reaction from around the country prompted not only by the anti-bombing resolution but also by a Berkeley Fire Department decision to remove U.S. flags from fire trucks during an anti-war demonstration and a dispute over whether [councilwoman] Spring called the United States a "terrorist" in a newspaper interview.

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Wednesday, October 17, 2001

19:39 Added to the pool of people: Dimitri, Paula, Teodora, Brechtje (recent). Updated: Gabriëlle, Dan Bodner, Stefan (by mistake!).
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00:32 Remember today. The train and the book, down, up. Alforria.
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00:29 I know what she did. She glued it all together. She saw the last fifteen. She dropped it here. She laughed all along. She learned everything. She called to say hi. She wrote her name five million times, all over the world.
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00:20 No - but thanks anyway.
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Sunday, October 14, 2001

22:02 Oba
Brazilian dinner for two being prepared at the PHKade: feijoada and purê de mandioquinha. A bit heavy for dinner time, we admit, but what the heck. Está na mesa, she says. The roots, the roots.
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Friday, October 12, 2001

21:46 Bezoek x2
In half an hour I'll be leaving to Schiphol to pick Teodora, an old friend from the art school days. She now lives in London and decided to come for the weekend and spend her birthday with me. There will be a lot of talking going on, as it always happens when Brazilians get together (horror vacui, some say). I went especially to the supermarket to get extended-breakfast items and other nibbling supplies.

Teo's visit has been planned quite a while ago - what wasn't planned at all was the surprise apprerance of Paula C, from whom I hadn't heard a word in ages. Last Tuesday I was walking home and laughing as one of her very funny jokes came back to my mind (the one with the two Mauricios) and wondered how/when would we meet again; a few minutes later I received her e-mail informing me of the trip. We'll try to meet up sometime tomorrow.

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Monday, October 08, 2001

13:12 Love attack?
On a phone call with Paul yesterday morning I discussed one of my lnp entries and mentioned that I stopped all I was doing to write it because I had been the victim of a sudden, fulminating love attack. Being infatuated as Paul is at the moment (believe me, he is), he thought the term was excellent and used it in a short little entry of himself. Hours later, as the US-UK air strikes started, the term took extra, unexpected, undesired meaning. Oh-oh.
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13:05 Airplant meeting this morning. Lots of interesting things being lined up. We're glued together good. I like.
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Sunday, October 07, 2001

21:03 Start
I have just been watching Osama Bin Laden on TV. He is commenting on the first American-British military strikes in Afghanistan that happened just over two hours ago. His statement seems to have been recorded in broad daylight; when the attacks took place it was already night in Kabul. The CNN translator not very good, and he is clearly nervous. Bin Laden promises Americans will never again feel safe and secure until the Middle-Eastern countries do. He says it's a war beween believers and non-believers. He brings up the words 'Israel', 'Palestine', 'Jewish' quite a few times. If I was a Muslim I would be really upset to have my religion put into this position.
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11:42 Wake up. Listen. Craving, repulse, indifference, Grand Canyon. Thankyou. Copycat–handlebar. Thankyou. Far away memorial, the friend of a friend, thankyou. Doing what he did best, living his life. Thankyou.

And don't forget.
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11:34 Dear Richard: Your goodness is infinite. It takes me time to understand. The depth of it.
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Saturday, October 06, 2001

12:49 Marina. Cortina. Calor. Montanha de água. Mistério. Lembrança.
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Friday, October 05, 2001

12:48 Your next life banging at the door. Think. Are you prepared?
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Thursday, October 04, 2001

15:04 If you die before you die...
Very good afternoon, yesterday, at DasArts (Paul had asked me to come by and help one of the groups use a head-mounted minicam). The place alone is very stimulating and it is now filled with interesting people working on their interesting ideas. What else does one want?




Recollection: A small passageway leading to the studio had a particular smell that brought up instant sharp vivid flashes of my short stay, back in 1994, at the Thai Buddhist retreat Wat Suan Mokkh.

Exchange: I had the chance to meet Heerko van der Kooij and his fresh new Visor Edge: good talk and lots of IR port activity.

Food: DasArts director Alida Neslo walked around the long communal lunch table distributing bunches of freshly plukked walnuts, brown moss still encrusted in the soft shells.
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13:50 Thank you
John C. Lilly died last week at the age of 86 (via Caterina). Congratulations! It's a good thing to die after having being involved with so many unusual ideas. Dr. Lilly was a source of inspiration and mind-opening ideas throughout my teenage days (a time when time did not matter and I had an Omni magazine subscription).

Here's a fragment of a message from the Earth Coincidence Control Office (especially for you):

TO ALL HUMANS
If you wish to control coincidences in your own life on the planet Earth, we will cooperate and determine those coincidences for you under the following conditions:

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Wednesday, October 03, 2001

10:27 Gossip
Gabriëlle has the latest flu (the 4-day one). Advantage: ultra-sexy voice.
Teike tells me she won't read OR watch TV in bed. Weird.
Nina is learning latin.
Fred, of all people, is picking up a taste for fighting.
I dreamt of Ruben last night.
Gitte has been seen in Italy with her boyfriend.
I am late to bring a minicamera to dasArts. Really late.
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Monday, October 01, 2001

12:33 Welcome home




My tatamis were finally delivered. Just like I was told, they're sort of greenish in the beginning, and smell like fresh hay. It's an overwhelming smell. Time passes, the color will gradually become something straw-like, and the smell will fade away. Right now it feels like living in a haystack, and I like it.

There's still some finishing wood work to be done. Borders, etc. Dimitri will be available to work in ten days - being pretty good timing after all: Richard will be back in Europe just a few days later.
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