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Monday, September 23, 2002

13:29 Testimonial
For two hours I've been to Game Neverending and all I got was two hours of fun and a perpetual hula-hoop!
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Sunday, September 22, 2002

21:43

Image of Neptune

Last week Richard went to Paris and brought me a much expected edition of Gaston Bachelard's l'eau et les rêves, which I had decided would be worth the trouble of reading in the original French. Hoping to make the task a little more practical I also decided to search for a good Palm OS French dictionary but then realized I wouldn't be able to install anything into my Clié before returning to Amsterdam... so I looked through the bookshelves and found my old pocket French-Portuguese dictionary. The idea of toggling between French and Portuguese (as a change to my daily English-Dutch) felt sort of refreshing. En terecht! a while later, in bed, I dived into the book expecting a lot of difficulty but instead I found myself all comfortable back in my native latin element. Surprised at how much I could (correctly) infer, I only once in a while checked this or that with the dictionary or with Richard, himself a native French speaker.

The book title translates 'Water and dreams, an essay on the imagination of the matter' and Bachelard starts by proposing a distinction between two types of imagination: that of the form and that of the matter or substance. He goes on promising quite a ride into the poetics of water:
"...si nous pouvouns convaincre notre lecteur qu'il y a, sous les images superficielles de l'eau, une série d'images de plus en plus profondes, de plus en plus tenaces, il ne tardera pas à éprouver, dans ses propres contemplations, une sympathie pour cet approfondissement ; il sentira s'ouvrir, sous l'imagination des formes, l'imagination des substances. Il reconnaîtra dans l'eau, un type d'intimité, intimité bien différente de celles que suggèrent les « profondeurs » du feu ou de la pierre. Il devra reconnaître que l'imagination matérielle de l'eau est un type particulier d'imagination. Fort de cette connaissance d'une profondeur dans un élément matériel, le lecteur comprendra enfin que l'eau est aussi un type de destin, non plus seulement le vain destin des images fuyantes, le vain destin d'un rêve qui ne s'achève pas, mais un destin essentiel qui métamorphose sans cesse la substance de l'être. (...) L'eau est vraimant l'élément transitoire. Il est la métamorphose ontologique essentielle entre le feu et la terre. L'être voué à l'eau est un être en vertige. Il meurt à chaque minute, sans cesse quelque chose de sa substance s'écroule. La mort quotidienne n'est pas la mort exubérante du feu qui perce le ciel de ses flèches ; la mort quotidienne est la mort de l'eau. L'eau coule toujours, l'eau tombe toujours, elle finit toujours en sa mort horizontale. Dans d'innombrables exemples nous verrons que pour l'imagination matérialisante la mort de l'eau est plus songeuse que la mort de la terre : la peine de l'eau est infinie."

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Saturday, September 21, 2002

23:34 Last night I looked out of the window and saw dozens of clocks on the balconies and windows of the next door building. For every apartment one clock, round and big as a person. Looking again I noticed they were all ticking backwards, and thought 'oh yes, I remember'; they were there because of a demonstration; we were against something or in favour of an emergency cause. I thought about my own timing in joining it.

I'm in Brussels for the weekend. I arrived yesterday evening and met Dirk de Wit, who I hadn't seen in a long while, at the Mokafé in Gallerie de la Reine. We had a good talk and caught up with news of the last year; Dirk then took me to the opening of the short film of Els Dietvorst 'Lied voor de prijs van een geit' (Song for the price of a goat), documenting the life of an elderly goat shepherd living by the water in the outskirts of Brussels. Highly natural and visceral stuff: cute animals being born and being killed, and a jolly barbecue where the old (Italian!) men sing, drink wine and use knives and teeth to carve meat from the bone they hold in their fingers.

The film was shown at M.A.P., a lofty gallery space attended by many warm and cute Brussels people switching languages like crazy and greeting each other with one kiss on the cheek. At the bar I am introduced to Els Dietvorst who introduces us to the three Italian men, very tiny and nice and a bit shy as expected. I am told the party will later continue, outdoors, at the shepherd's yard by the water, dj and all, in a we-show-ours-you-show-yours sort of evening.
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Monday, September 16, 2002

18:06

three naked men outdoors nearby the South pole

I was searching Google for a Yeti picture (?) when I came across Gene Davidson's 300 club page with some fun photos of himself and his buddies standing buck naked at -74ºC (-100ºF) next to the Geographic South Pole back in 1999. I decided to send him an e-mail asking if I could link to the photos. In his reply Gene tells me that he once applied for a job at the University of Chicago and that part of the contract was to spend a year at the South Pole looking after a telescope. How cool is that?
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Thursday, September 12, 2002

01:12 Read naked
A typeface called Sauna was created by Underware designers in The Hague. The font comes in a CD attached to a little book entitled READ NAKED that features fifty pages of sauna stories and anectotes, all designed using the Sauna font family.
You can hardly avoid studying the carnal manifestation of life. You will see, hear and maybe smell bodies of all sizes, shapes and colours, in all stages and conditions. Life embodied before your very eyes! The metaphor is evident: inside the sauna you will encounter lots and lots of different letterforms ... each having their purpose and degree of beauty.
The book is water and heat proof ( "...printed on the Rolls Royce of papers, Neobond") and some of its text is only visible in the sauna when temperatures reach above 80ºC. The drying instructions suggest you chose beween a washing line, the sauna itself, microwave or gas oven.

(Pictures of the secret sauna launch party)
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Sunday, September 08, 2002

20:25 No option (best option)
I just cooked myself a delicious spinach-corn soup and now go all ummm as I realize I'm enjoying my apartment like never before. And hey–let me see–it's been exactly one year since I settled in!
This time last year Dimitri had just finished building the platform for my tatamis. Life changed so much, so so much since then.
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Wednesday, September 04, 2002

23:46 I am just back from the première of Concrete Island (a theater performance made by Stefan and Isabelle). I enjoyed it very much and to my surprise I find myself wishing it would have lasted a while longer. Many friends came to see it so I chatted a little bit after the show but am glad I managed to be home early. There's a book and a bed here next to me and that's really fine.
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08:34 Trying to start a clean-up period of healthier food, no alcohol and more stable sleeping hours. Something almost impossible in Amsterdam, I know, but I'll do my best.
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Tuesday, September 03, 2002

01:48 Tonight's displacement map (II)

world map and routes

Richard LaRue is not in Brussels or Amsterdam but in Montréal
Joe DeCola is not in New York or Amsterdam but in Martha's Vineyard
Dewald Bloem is not in London or Amsterdam but in São Paulo
Rogério Lira is not in Martha's Vineyard but in Amsterdam.
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Sunday, September 01, 2002

14:21 Now I do know
of the wave that raised from the sea
and of the stars the two of us forgot to count

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