March 2009 - Meandering home

March 28. Sin titulo

The more alive I feel the more my writing becomes fixed, the more it becomes a token of - death. Mmm, at this point it seems a good idea to let some dogs off the leash to sniff at this paradox. The dogs run towards it, run a few times around it and start to ...

30 March, 2009

highrise, mes copains, token of death

Travel

March 27.

Power and thinking. Again, I am going to tell you something from my authority as a writer of an accepted phd. To many ears it will sound like bullshit. To some ears it will be obvious. To your ears it will be like music. I am not going to tell you about the power of ...

30 March, 2009

ad for myself, Freud, guilt, movie, power, rational

Travel

March 26. Lobo.

Philosophy should be sprouting from the pain of being. Like a fragile plant. What am I saying here? A plant? Pain of being? I am dwelling in Buenos Aires these days, feel like I have to move on because I already feel too much at home here. It gets a little bit aburrido. But of ...

30 March, 2009

Argentina, boredom, meat, Sara

Travel

March 25. Backups.

I have to make backups regularly. Backups are an interesting phenomenon. They can make you feel safe. I mean, right after you made a backup, right after you saved all your work on various usb-sticks, as well as on various servers on different continents so that your work will survive a partial nuclear winter, and ...

30 March, 2009

backups

Travel

March 24. Tango lesson.

A few days from now I will experience some unprobable situation. I was playing dice and had to throw five times the same number. The called it the poker. You have three tries. I threw two ones in the first try and threw another one with the second try. Put the remaining two dices back ...

30 March, 2009

Pacino, probability, tango

Travel

March 23.

In Argentina, a coffee Jarrito is a medium-sized cup of coffee. It's as good as it gets. I have written in a café that whole day. I have to sit close to the enchufe, the plug. What is there to say? It is like office work, sitting behind a computer and hitting the keys on ...

29 March, 2009

labour, mask, rather, thinking, Tribunales

Travel

March 22. Luck.

Luck seems to follow me wherever I go. Even on a normal day when I some work that muse is right behind me. What is the nature of good luck? Getting lucky? I don't mean winning the lottery or living a long and healthy life. I don't know either, you tell me. I feel very ...

28 March, 2009

Amy Winehouse, luck, san telmpo, Sara, smile

Travel

March 21. The brewery in our head.

"Mi nombre es Cecilia si necessito cualcosa me llamas..." said the friendly waitress in the café where I write today. Writing in Buenos Aires is optimal. Firstly, it's one of the worlds most literate cities, with an impressive amount of good bookstores. Secondly, the wifi cafés are plenty and affordable. Thirdly, the climate stimulates creativity. ...

26 March, 2009

brewery, Buenos Aires, emotion, Palermo

Travel

March 20. I read it in the guidebook.

Rested. Travel guidebooks use a rhetorically smooth English that I like to call mashed language. The smoothness of the idiom gives me an artificial taste in the mouth, a taste like a wine that is everymen's friend but leaves the connaisseur with a bitter aftertaste. It's the length of the sentences, the range of the ...

22 March, 2009

Buenos Aires, Guidebooks

Travel

March 19.

Daniel works at the Argentinian Correos. He is a very friendly and goodlooking guy. He travels daily between Cordoba and Buenos Aires for three months now. Before, he went to all parts of Argentina - he knows every Correos headquarter in the country. His camionette is accompagnied by a custodia-car to protect him from robbers ...

22 March, 2009

Correas, hitchhiking, narrative

Travel

March 18. Kaiser of Cordoba.

I could work in a fancy café once again. I really have to get used to it. The idea is to write a certain amount of pages per kilometer so I can keep track of where on earth I will be when I finish certain chapters, stories, word-rows. A couple of hours went by with ...

22 March, 2009

Cordoba, Kaiser

Travel

March 17. Cordoba.

We woke up in Cordoba and started walking around under the hot sun. In this city we had the address of some couchsurfers so we called them we were coming and jumped on a crowded bus. After a twenty minute bus ride we arrived at their place, a small one-floor white casa with a garden ...

21 March, 2009

Cordoba, original

Travel

March 16. Wine tasting.

What would Jack have done? He would have treated Sara and drink a good Cabernet Sauvignon or Malbec with her, he would have lied his hand on her rounder parts and sing a hymn to the moon with her. He wouldn't that care Sara fell from the sky. He wouldn't have cared if she grew ...

21 March, 2009

asado, cabalgata, Cordoba, Mendoza, wine

Travel

March 15. Mendoza.

Pablo went out early for work, and we left with him. Still sleepy, we walked along the grand avenue of Santiago searching for a please to sit down and have a coffee. Although the city center was full of people, we could hardly find a bakery like the ones I am used to in Berlin ...

21 March, 2009

Andes, Mendoza, Santiago

Travel

March 14. A blue ball.

Santiago still. The museum at the Moneda, near the government seat has an interesting interior but the current exhibitions are not interesting enough to lure us inside. Instead, the swimming pool we saw the day before is much more attractive. The hot day makes me lazy and I played in the water with a small ...

18 March, 2009

blue ball, Santiago, swimming pool

Travel

March 13. Providence.

Friday the thirteenth. I am in a café where the waiter has bloody eyes and under the glass plates of the tables are roasted and unroasted coffee beans. Santiago de Chili is a magnificent city, a metropole with many faces. I've been here for a couple of days now and moved about the center enough ...

18 March, 2009

baby, Providencce, Santiago

Travel

March 12. El Café.

Good day, writing. The apartment didn't have an airconditioning but that didn't bother me. I wrote on this very experimental travel writing thing, associating freely words and thoughts I don't believe in. Where did this writing take place? I try to remember. It was a round table in a kitchenette, a glass table you can ...

18 March, 2009

El café, photography, Santiago

Travel

March 11. Santiago sweet.

I decide to meet someone today I call that person Sara because that's what first comes to my mind. She was not on our overnight bus to Santiago de Chile, I didn't meet her on the streets of this five million metropole with the 02 area code, neither was it the woman that sold me ...

18 March, 2009

meaning, Santiago, Sara

Travel

March 11. Santiago sweet.

18 March, 2009

meaning, Santiago, Sara

Travel

March 10. Adventure.

Drop-out. Look at that dash! Drop-dash-out. It's so beautiful. Almost a reason to drop out of the system. On the other hand, inside the system there are many beautiful dashes to, so it is not a logically valid reason. ...

12 March, 2009

canopy, drop-out, rafting, volcano

Travel

March 9. Hitchhiking to Chile.

A day of full-blown hitchhiking excitement. We started off in San Martin, took a local bus to some place in the direction of Junin that threw us out in some barrio with dusty dirt roads and a beautiful scenery. We walked back to the paved road and stuck out our thumbs the way Chris McCandles ...

12 March, 2009

Chile, clinic, cross, hitchhiking, Lanin, volcano

Travel

March 8.

Making the concepts of death and peace converge, how's that for universal religion?

In the Mapuche village near San Martin de los Andes a child held the barrier for the tourists. We walked around; the people had conserved some aspects of their traditional lifestyle. A girl herded some sheep. I photographed some goats. Their ...

12 March, 2009

Andes, art, hitchhiking, Junin, San Martin

Travel

march 7.

A puppy walks up to me while I am writing. Her clumsy movements touch me. She puts her nose against the screen of my computer. She is exploring the world and that says it all. I don't need to write another word. Hush. Let's all be silent today.

12 March, 2009

puppy, silent

Travel

March 6. A decent hike.

We went for a decent hike to Frey near Bariloche. As a result of last night's ethanol feast, we started only at two in the afternoon. Took a bus to Catedral, the starting point of the hike and a wintersport base in the colder season. Three hours up, a beautiful cold lake and a magnificent ...

12 March, 2009

Bariloche, dissolve, failurre, hike, person

Travel