“Mind the gap.” That was the name of the exhibition you saw at the Hamburger Bahnhof. Another name for your thesis and/or dissertation. You didn’t grasp the meaning then, you barely grasp it now. The gap in the gesture, in and as the body. Als Sprache. “Sir, your ticket is for one month from now” “___________” Until then she was speaking German to me.
History of faces. You stared at the teeth of the woman at the Swiss airlines counter. “There’s no more tickets until the end of July”. You, gesture, look at the other ones. The war between gods and giants. Remembrance. Even the gods despair. Although what captures your attention now is the separation, the blanks. As it has always done. You wrote yesterday about suspension, pause. How about 24 hours, how about a month?
You felt certain erasing. What is the difference between a trace and an erasure? As you walked for the fifth time around the gates, the counters, circling. As you leave your luggage for one day there. Crossing against the city, re-tracing just to obliterate again. What it looks like. How it might have looked. Perhaps there is no erasing. All the visages remain.
But you have to pick, to select. That is an obliteration too-as you already know from your not so abstract mind. Then again a position, a way of laying, of lying, of resisting. You think of the eyes, the thought of the eyes and the absence thereof. Alas your modern mind. A little of gravity and water, enough for this picture.
What you miss. As the first image you had (of her). Always two. Perhaps you think in sculpture, any dream of yours is one. How to interpret this. Not only the three dimensions, but also the rock, the feel of it, its resistance, its coldness-nicht immer. From where do these dreams, these rocks speak to you? That is how you feel (their) language. (Now you must stick to English-tal vez aun en español, tú sientes la contaminación de ambas influencias).
Still there is always another screen, another pair of eyes before yours. ‘You’ cannot take the image, ‘you’ cannot create it. (How you must have looked today running through the airport, asking questions in your worst German, looking desperate.) And yet, Macht. Zeige ein bisschen Macht in deiner Augen. Show or display yourself.
Your job, as absurd as it is, to think. “You will never get paid for that” you remember your professor saying. It pays, but that is not a simple verb or action. Of course you’re more interested in the unknown philosopher. There’s something vulgar about Socrates and Plato here. The rock or the text. Although it’s always the double face. Nietzschesplato.
As before, I’m getting lost. ‘Strange feeling’, verdad de perogrullo o antonomasia. You try to reconstruct the stories, but you know it is futile. You know you’re not here, not there anymore. Wo ist deine Heimat. Ich habe drei. Tres hogares. Trois foyers. Right now you feel you will never leave. Was ? The Museum. Einer alte Philosoph. Ein Kind, nur. All of this is making you. Kein Spass. Manchmal. Weniger.
Farthest that you can be from the object, from the concept. Confusion is… fill in the blank. Leere Augen. Ojos vacíos. Years go you will not make the connection. You will not make these connections. (Your friend told you: you feel the nostalgia there. Is it that wrong. What is the turn? Bisagra. Genou. Uturn.) Wait, that’s still a tomb. Your last museum in Berlin-2009.
Götter. Someplace at the beginning of this diary there is the first reference. “I write to survive”. Am Anfang. Cancel the uploading. Algo ahí no marcha. Your pipe is at the airport. So as all your clothes. Perhaps you can change them tomorrow before boarding. An extra night. An extra trip. It’s not the end because it’s not well-paraphrasing your friend. Not yet. Not yet.
Götter. Think of Klossowski. You saw his goddess there. No Actaeon, though. In what will you be transformed? Noch einmal. It starts getting hard to write in this keyboard. Last spree. This is the year. You know, you will know several times. Ereignis. Just see the colours. “We will get married on the mountains” You said it in German. Doesn’t matter. Awe.
How you build. Thus you need a plan, another dream. Même avec des cauchemars. Même nos rêves. The pleasure, yours, lays within. Just as a game-in the bus back, as you get on the plane, a small joke in another language and in yours. Time to recapitulate. Let the words for once be faithful to the mistakes of naivety. “Once could say, we lost the space race… another one could say we won.”
Keys. Llaves. You can play with that homophony. You feel you should play. Glücklich sein. You make a joke, but don’t talk about the joke. Don’t lose the spirit. ¿Ya ves? Always as a question. Thus are the keys, always preceded with a question. Question and answer at the same time. You look for the French key, the Mexican key. (For a moment your keyboard makes that noise: key). Mais, si c’est un batôn? Walk with it, as your best friend.
Perhaps you’re at the comedy now. Or it’s only writing. Which is always also a comedy. As, June 28, 22:36, Berlin. Noch, yet. What do you call this kind of time? Lost. Never. And yet. The feeling of the loss. As you struggle to comprehend, and to stop the jouissance of that feeling. Ein regelmässig Leser. Ganz genug. Remember how you started this day? Bedeutungen.
The end is not Deutsch, not exactly the West either. “The end of the trip”. In other words, no end-as you listen to Rennt Lola rennt. Always Berlin with you. So nah! (Tomorrow at this time: still over the ocean. When everything goes all right. Next day at this time: walking towards downtown.) The big things have this purpose, to protect. As writing. As Literature.
Edith Piaf: Une tonnerre qui s’allume, bravo, bravo! Lost connection. How many things your brain can hold at the same time? Problems of OCD. And yet sometimes you manage to make the switch. With the help of images, bien sûr. Und jetzt. Wasser. Agua. How much it sounds. Ce contre qui tu luttes, c’est le jugement. “You never judge”. Is not an image a judgment? Problems of abstraction. (Your host just laughed, and that filled you with a strange happiness, the kind that makes you smile and look out for a moment).
You remember your sensation from today? When everything was unsettled-und immer noch so? (Now, you recognize that guitar: “Her name is Yoshimi…” Play with that, Gedankespiel. “I know she can beat them…”) Tomorrow you will try a new path. Alles klar.
You listen to Bowie’s Warszawa. Getting ready for the night. For tomorrow. You remember the feeling of your last night in Paris. Did you sleep? A little. Glad to have this Latin American eyes. How I saw Berlin when I arrived, how I’ll see Munich, Chicago, Kansas and finally Lawrence. How I’ll see everything just before I close my eyes. How I’ll see you.
