This was 14 years, 7 months, 4 days ago

(I haven't written anything since July 17th?? It seems like an eternity has passed.)

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synced iphone to computer. accidentally removed all of the notes I had for an year thanks to itunes. I think of that apollo 13 scene of a wedding ring swirling down into a bathtub drain that I saw when I was probably about 10. cherished ideas that I had in: iceland, korea, japan, new york, cambridge, san francisco, and everywhere here and there jotted down briefly and now never recovered, little dipolar metaphorical bits of 0 and 1 flipping back and forth parity checked and error-correctioned for. and then: the massive ramifications of a tickbox upending this small civilization of moss-overgrown and loved bits of data and turning over a new leaf, churning things into the order of a clean slate, a starkly pristine loam. the only way to get past this gentle feeling of having forgotten precious things is to grit teeth and move on. there will always be new things to forget--

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what a whirlwind! architectural thinking brings everything up to a massive scale, oceanic waves, tidal movements, tectonic plates embracing, and so on. an influx of people, interested and thus interesting. if you hear a deep rumble from underneath the ground and you've always wondered what that cellar door was it was the machinery with its picturesque deep red glow moving, clicking into place, and archaic cogwheels meant to be (or at least believing that they're meant to be) starting to move towards determined destinations.

already it's all sliding past, quickly, some specter of a moment. bottle tossings and floors crashed on, things like that. the sway of a cab ride, twice, and the numerous mottled shadows of trees underneath streetlamps in the quiet (and maybe too quiet) light of a somerville street. wild jumping ups and photographs and things like that. and so on and so on.

if there's a thing to all of this, like a Thing, then it's that cdisco was the first initial point on a series of dots launching towards the right and towards the arrow of the axis underneath that says 'time(t)' (whether units are in months or years or decades, who knows). where these points go I think I know, but let's do the linear regression or the cubic or polynomial or whatever. watch the simplistic and altogether elegantly continuous and consistent lines of mathematical constraint intertwine and harmonize with the jagged edges generated from the interplay of the presence and absence of data point, data point, data point. little rough triangles on either side of this regression line, dancing over and underneath, from this point to that point.

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there are dark rooms with thunderstormings going on, and quiet streets with cars and joggers passing by. I am in a funny place. I am keeping quiet.

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one night written waiting for the L train and then the G train, at union square, on the iphone:

Guy steps out of a DVD porn store having fulfilled his intent; door chime now chirps goodbye as I see destination in his steps and the strands of a leather whip, freshly bought, swinging in his hand. Something about the combination of car keys in hand and the freshness of the blue of the jeans this guy is wearing makes this all so domestic all of a sudden. It's not that whips aren't initially domestic, or that the experience here is about 'stretching my boundaries' -- it's that something about his step and the sway of the leather tendrils bring the whip to an absolute point of mundaneness, literally mundus in the Latin, like the worldly dirt things acquire after you've bought them and handled them, preciousness falling off with every heartthreatening drop to the ground, until soon the fetishized product comes to you as less of a presence and more of a quiet little creature kneeling in the southwest and dustiest corner of your desk drawer that you got a few years ago, something to come and touch you as utterly simple. 'Lost its luster' maybe, but much more than that.

These are not metaphors for people or relationships or something like that, at least not now, but direct and maybe too literal examples of what-does-happen and happen to objects, physical things that get the shine stripped from them and approach you on a much more intensely functional level; or if you don't use them that often then on an intensely formal level. The rounded base of mugs or electric toothbrush chargers coming rapidly at you, tonight. Phones dropped and skitteredly tossed across tables, eons away from the carefully photographed renderings on their original packaging. The weathered and not altogether unattractive patina of buildings moving against architectural renderings, full of a strange stark geometry and cleanliness, ordered chaos.

And so this materialization or visceral tangible sense of the loss of this shine comes to me with this newly bought whip -- the purpose in his step and the directness with which he opens the driver's door of a car parked on the street (and on 14th street at that, with emergency blinkers on) all translating into some sort of gesture that I cannot yet decide whether it is crushingly simple and stark and almost heartless in its lack of desire for the object itself and for the eventual use of the object -- or whether I should be overjoyed for this liberation, fetish objects removed from fetishistic objectification (ba dum ching), objects just any other objects like another on a democratic and unilateral level. And then I cannot decide so I keep on walking, and then he enters and becomes a silhouette in a darkened car, and then as I walk I imagine the phlegmy cough of a car engine starting up somewhere behind me, and then his car's just another vehicle on the street, the stream.

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silence for three or four days sounds like a clean crisp cold salad of baby spinach, arugula, some cucumber with just a brisk and brief upending (tilting, rather) of the olive oil nozzle over the bowl, a few turns of the wooden pepper grinder, and a small pinch of salt.

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buildings as mostly optical? I have this image of a mirage-like building, flow and circulation guided only by the optical guidance of corridors, the double date of twin walls and ceiling-floors, and in addition the quiet solo addition of a few elevator buttons here or there, little circles drawn around points of intersection. throughout the passageway of a building your finger presses a button or your hand gently opens a doorknob but other then that all other interaction is with your feet and with your eyes. call it a certain solipsism but applied to vision -- we introduce optical solipsism maybe, the chief curator of an architectural experience, relying on the foundations of architectural convention and the belief in these canonical foundations.

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I have shoes. I have a bag and a suitcase and a sublet. I have a cellphone with internet and email on it. I have a laptop. I have a p.o. box.