I was walking with Volker between the buildings of the Kunsthochschule in Kiel, and I see something sitting on the sidewalk, something round, about an inch high and three inches in diameter. I can’t believe it, it is too strange. it is a cake of Mr. Zog’s Sex Wax! surfing days resurrected in my brain, body, right there in Kiel, fifteen years stripped from experience, just thinkin’ of that swallowtail triple-fin board again, bellying up over the small waves out, diving under the big ones, leash tugging on the ankle, keeping the board close enough but not to close to thrash the dayLights outta yer head when you surface after the thrumming pass of water mountain overhead. sand grains get into the wax and leave the un-wet-suited belly a bit raw after a long afternoon of trying to ride six-foot curlers… I write to George, who I haven’t heard from in a coon’s age, he’s too busy trying to beat the definitive NOVEL out before inertia takes over, and teach at the same time. Somehow, he is one of the few people who I feel comfortable writing absolutely ANYTHING to … He knows what language can do, and I guess he cringes sometimes at my linguistic ineptness, but at least I think he enjoys a twist or two …

After putting a book down (I am reading a book!) in the pile of to-do (I have to mail it to Terhi later in the week), finished, I put on little Sony earphones that are plugged into the laptop A POWERBOOK which, in turn, is plugged into a 10Mb line out into the wide buff gray ether out there, where I have tuned in internet radio gogaga from Boulder … good ole Joe and Joel keep it comin’! and check email to keep myself from concentrating on anything more close at hand, like dealing with a class plan for 13 Finnish students that threaten to blow my head away after it has been wrapped around a cocktail of students from too many cultures, too many mentalities, too many personalities, like I would enjoy flat middle-class middle-Amurikan dolts instead, for a change, the kids here are too fucking whatever. Here I am. Let’s talk about creativity! Dig into it, and then do it! I know they’ll rise to the occasion!

here at Björn’s, he is out, Easter Morning, singing in a choir at church. I stay in, it seems cold out, despite a warm looking sunrise. yesterday I manage to find a copy of the Kieler Nachtrichten newspaper with the article in it. rather long, scanning it, it seems to cover critical issues, but my German is not good enough to allow a full apprehension of it. save it for later to read with a German speaker. Schubert on, Björn has a huge opera and classic vocal collection. last night we are listening to the Texaco Metropolitan Opera Broadcast live from New York, and so I relate the story how my relationship with opera was most heavily influenced by the fact that my father used to listen to this very same broadcast which started rather early on Saturday mornings. the recollection of being woken up as a sleep-committed teenager was, by far, the most unpleasant aspect, but being woken up by Marie Callas singing Donde lieta usci… from Puccini’s La Bohème put the concept over any reasonable edge. storming out to turn the volume down, discover that he is not even in the room, but out working on the lawn mower, getting it ready for me to mow the lawn when I get up. operatic conspiracy. grrrrrr. okay, now I can enjoy almost all music; my criteria being as long as it is good seems to hold out into realms of all sorts except into the banality of badness. the line of sound and music has blurred to a point where listening and hearing are continuous. sometimes it is music that focuses ones attention onto itself, sometimes sound has the same effect, sharpening the sensual intensity of an event. we are hunters, in this incarnation, hunters, gatherers, (clockwork orange), violence-breeders to take care of continuing species. Ludwig van. gorgeousness and gorgeosity. shagging for the genetic promulgation of being. but who cares about genes? a single generation has no use for genetics — it is one of those questions that the Buddha suggested was a waste of energy to consider. what is important, then? the whole day is gone, Björn cooks a nice Thai meal (having recently returned from a visit to Bangkok) and I screen some videos. complications with Tornio, they don’t know when I am arriving. stress, but I don’t care about it, I just go. I can’t be bothered with complications when they are no fault of my own.

Leaving the flat in Lahti, after a relatively long stay of four weeks, I immediately experience the stress of movement-insecurity. And again, it plunges me into a state of ineffectiveness. Crisis point. Questions of how to proceed with this style of living. The vacillations I experience emphasize the fragility of building a presence of being on the ego. That is the source of the oscillations. These become the most uncomfortable and stressful times of life. Other times are filled with the in-your-face of teaching, where time flies by as I make the pronouncements of a teacher — or at least speak with the students. At the same moment, it seems that speaking introduces its own complex web of deception. That having to speak to the Other is a way of escape from the Self, as a rattling noise that supplants any need to look into the frightening swirl of internal energies. A diversion from the essential. Really looking for the way of Zen detachment from this. A stiff back is not the right way to be going. keep on keepin’ on is one way that the truculent San Franciscan flower child would put it, moving targets are safer. but stillness and silence are so difficult to bear. Although at times the floating body simply desires to come to a rest. Disturbances in mental functionality seems to no are different than of other ways can to forget filters of movements into the base of binary openings. Enough said? Who cares? Not me! Plow, Plow through Oxen! Little things. Undisclosed. Partial, fragmentary, immediate, extraordinary. transition. movement. for the moment, lost again. far from a home that is not mine, surrounded by homes and houses. cut loose. partners around, in various stages of being. Sun breaks through the high arched window over the tall buildings across the street. breaks through a multitude of meditations to give me Light. (Jah Rastafari!) but what tools are there in life and in the mind? move through this Light, no, remain stationary, Immobile. for a grasping thousand seconds. body locked in a known curl, legs crossed, and only the pen-hand in motion, mind following. But following at a distance, in low visibility where musings break few borders, and run aground often on size and placement. and time. following myself. sun heats up. and I am left feeling warm. sleepless. under lids that never close. with the storm of the ego, (it will pass) and I will go on. without remembering the real sensation of it all. only repetition will bring recall. lost in a storm. swimming pool, immersion, submersion, a small ache where cold water penetrates to the eardrum. decide not to flip-turn, but to stop for a moment. he is standing in the water. his nose is crooked and flattened. a fighter. long stringy hair. he turns to me and says something. (this dialogue to be finished)… I find a scrap of paper where I have scribbled, sometime last fall in Colorado when Loki was with me, a fragment of one of his dreams. In a previous life, before being born, he was a wolf with two names, one was Strong Jumper or Sterk Hoppur, the other Hungry Jumper or Svangur Hoppur. I make it through the day, not really very confident of anything, especially what I am doing. Incredulous that I can be so fragile. Wondering at what others do in this life. Each Other is focused on the way of going through the material jungle, looking for survival.

At Randy and Amy’s place. I have to stop this. The crashing at friends’ places is beginning to wear on the friendships. I want to disappear, taking no space and needing nothing. I feel irresponsible and unsuccessful. (Money is the measure of success that I all too often apply to myself — because I live within a culture that pushes and reinforces this value above all others.) To consume is to be. Not to consume is not to be.

Should I care about this? Yes and no. As I drive inward with questions, I am still faced with a feeling that somehow what I am doing is right, scary though it may be. Not that I consider it exactly honorable to ask of others some generosity or hospitality. This is not my mission, and actually I have no mission at all, except merely to survive in a world that has become more and more inscrutable to me. Senseless combinations of events are strung together to make a Public History for which I have no feeling whatsoever. Or at least no more feeling than for any other fragment of the past that I might stumble upon in my own travels.

For communication to have meaning it must have a life. It must transcend you and me and become us. If I truly communicate, I see in you a life that is not me and partake of it. And you see and partake of me. In a small way we then grow out of our old selves and become something new. To have this kind of sharing I cannot enter into a conversation clutching myself. I must enter it with loose boundaries, I must give myself to the relationship, and be willing to be what grows out of it. — Hugh Prather

So it goes. My own birthday passes with little fanfare. I borrowed Randy’s car (not the Porsche) and in the morning drove over to Clifton, NJ to meet with Jim Whitman, a board member of Peters Valley Craft center. We had been in touch by phone concerning my interest in one of three possible situations at Peters Valley — either taking over the Photography Residency (that Bill held a few years back), standing in as Interim Director of the center following the firing of the Director in July and the impending departure of the Interim (Assistant) Director, Katherine Talcott in October, or, becoming the Director of the place out-and-out … It was a fruitful and open discussion, and afterward I drove up to Peters Valley itself (but not before stopping at the Five Star Diner for lunch), where I met with Katherine for some time, then with a number of the current art residents. After that spate of discussions, I headed over to Bill and Andrea’s place in Newton for dinner. Andrea is due with their third baby on 28 August, so they are in the waiting mode. I spent some time helping Bill with some computer questions after the usual delicious dinner.

Another long day. This morning Björn and I were up at 7:30 to catch a bus to the hydrofoil to Malmö, and then another short bus ride to the Academy. The hydrofoil took only 45 minutes and cost an astonishingly miniscule 15 DKK (= 3 USD). Competition in action. The Malmö Academy has exceptional facilities in an entirely new building. Everything was highly organized and secure with locks on all door except for the bathrooms. I was scheduled to give a lecture at 13:00 and I indeed did do just this. They have a decent lecture room with a video projector and assorted techno-goodies except for the fact that one amp channel and speaker had been fried, so I had to play video and audio works on one channel. Such is techno-life. My host, the Academy Principle, Gertrud Sandqvist I had met last year at the Nordic-Baltic Conference on Art and Technology in Helsinki. At the lecture she sat in the front row, not particularly unusual until the question-answer session at the end — she mediated between me and the students, choosing students, modifying their questions, and ”interpreting’ my answers for the students. More than odd, it was quite an show of the psychology of control. She seemed unable to allow the students to interact without her dominance. Sad for them. I understand now her reputation which is not great, on this very issue of control-freak. Oh well. Björn meanwhile was meeting some former students. We ended up taking different trains — I had the First Class EurailPass, and could ride in style, though flat broke.

At the moment I am sitting comfortably on another one of these new high-speed European trains. This one the X2000 from Malmö to Stockholm. First class, they even serve a dinner. Not bad. I sat across from a senior Quality Control engineer from Eriksson, Inc., one of the largest companies in Sweden dealing in telecommunications. We had an interesting conversation about technological developments in Scandinavia and Europe, as well as photography. Already here in Scandinavia things have a feeling of organized and peaceful order, with a level of social wealth that is simply not available further south in Europe. There is far more competition in the telecom business which is bringing (for example) good internet and telephone services at reasonable rates. Education is well-funded (though conservative) without the need for academics to be constantly begging for national resources.

Well. Dan

“Lethargy is simply frozen violence”

What else? I sit in the middle of the Arctic Night (The middle always remains the same, no matter how long the night is). Waiting for sleep to fill my head, looking at a CRT screen. Eyes are getting crippled by the stress of focusing. Goodnight.

The next day late morning. All is gray. When I develop film here I notice the lack of contrast, especially after Colorado. The Light is different. I have taken to capitalizing the first letter of Light, and I have also quit using the Lord’s name in vain you know? Two changes from my previous life. You can look forward to wonderful things like this happening when you finish graduate school.

The work you sent arrived a bit worse for wear, and surely to the perplexity of the customs/postal people. They keep a close monitor on my post here, almost all packages are checked… A bit disturbing, but also amusing…
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