Scribblings with Green Chalk

Rebooting doesn’t help much nor did re-installing the system. I cannot afford not to eat for a year and by a new computer. I might go to the Flohmarkt on Saturday and get a typewriter. Then no one will stop me from maniacally hitting the keys and practicing my sinister laugh. I shall drown in coffee, too.

My computer’s dying on me. In a bout of desperation I confided in a specialist: Ich glaube, ich weiß worum es geht: Speicher. Er (ja, er ist ein Mann und nach der heutigen Reanimation heißt jetzt CHEESECAKE - lange Geschichte) möchte eine nette, fette RAM Roulade essen, aber Mama hat kein Geld und dazu denkt sie - ganz gemein - es wäre vielleicht Zeit für einen neuen Kuchen. Was soll Mama machen? Immer häufiger denkt sie an Macs, da sie sehr gute Akkus haben und das System ist bei ihnen sehr ästhetisch (als Kind wollte sie Buch Illustratorin werden).

The attachment to my laptop is deep and, from a specialist’s pov, absolutely exaggerated on the emotional plane. Well, I can’t help it, he (see German* text above) reminds me of Baudelaire’s cupboard**: he’s got all my crucial trivia. Could it be a compensation for being an only child, striking later in life?

S., with whom I share the newly-discovered terrors of only-childness, got a new printer. The big letters on its top say “Brother.” I saw him patting it with affection. If only our parents transferred some of their attention and demands to electronic devices…

 
Notes

*I never said my writing in German was good and correct.

**see appropriate “Spleen.” Cupboard, old love letters, perfume, and the Sphinx snuck in there too, I believe.

So apparently Karl Lagerfeld is amazed by Chan Marshall and wants to make her the next fashion icon. I not only despise Karl *** Pretentious Lagerfeld but hate all those attempts at Madonna’ing every possible female musician. I remember seeing pictures of Tori Amos playing background piano at a Viktor and Rolf show, thinking, oh my god, not only did they dress her in an old lampshade but they put her in piano bar hell and made her smile at it! And while American Doll Posse was not a bad album, the rawness of the first records died in silk and fumes of Chanel No.5. So now they’re after poor Cat Power. Death by fashion. This is how the world ends.

(Image found here)

When will multitasking finally be considered a medical condition? It is not a skill, it’s a way to shred your focus to tiny pieces. I’m reading two books, browsing through several websites, posting this, beginning an essay for class, and glancing at magazines scattered on the floor by my desk.

My profoundest thoughts at the moment are:

Where can I get a feminine fedora (US Glamour, Feb. 2008, p. 176)? My grandfather died after teaching me how to tie a tie, leaving my grandmother to burn all his hats in grief. I’d love to have a get up that would allow me to pay homage to Marlene Dietrich and my classy grandfather.

Don’t take symmetry of feeling for granted. For an instructive example go to the February US issue of Marie Claire, p. 72. Several couples were caught at Sundance and bullied into answering the challenge: “What I love about you.” One of the couples will surely be off movie events for a while. The editors must have hated these two for some reason, because here’s what appeared in print:

She: “He’s really tuned in to other people.”
He: “I’m gonna say her ass!”

I’m sorry, I can’t help imagining their faces when they opened the magazine. No. Stop. Go pray for focus.

There is a point where relativity cracks: some things just aren’t funny. And if you still think they are, you should run a reality check, you might be dangerously disconnected from the world around you. Sense of humor just ends somewhere, it’s not about “different feelings and responses.”

I saw this pencil sharpener ad two days ago and couldn’t quite believe my eyes: sharpening a pencil as rape and that is supposed to be funny?! Please enlighten me what is amusing about a pencil sharpener in the shape of a woman exclaiming (yes, it’s got sound) “Help!” when you stick in a pencil into its… well, it’s the plastic woman’s vagina (sic!). Is that not rape in some alternative universe of misogynist logic?

Right here, right now it’s a representation and an attempt to satirize rape. It promotes misogyny (among men and women) and tries to condone sexual violence.

One of the comments on Feministing.com linked to the producer’s customer service, and I’ll do the same here. Please write to them, tell them what you think about the product.

(Image found here)

I have wanted it for a long time now. Ever since I saw my former advisor’s fridge, covered in magnets from various places, but mostly from Amherst. I want my very own Emily Dickinson fridge magnet, even though I don’t own the fridge in my apartment. I want Emily to guard my cheese, jam, and peanut butter.

This is a note to Gretchen before she goes home for Thanksgiving, so that she knows she’s dealing with an obsession

(Post illustration from jodi’s weblog)

How do we come to desire objects? Logically, it makes little sense to have so much feelings for things that will never reciprocate them. The love of objects is the epitome of unrequited love.

The love of objects is a just a false impression. Even though we tend to believe the opposite is true, when you give it some thought, it’s more fleeting than human relationships. Having a thing means holding onto it, coming up with strategies to keep it where it is, away from the greed of others, from possible thefts and mysteries of misplacing. There’s a lot of effort put into keeping, since there is no connection between the owner and the inanimate possession. A thing has no reason to stay with you. And so, in their essential infidelity, objects ‘lose themselves’ all the time. Or they escape?… Sometimes with assistance. Everyday and everywhere people are looking for wayward objects.

And yet there is desire. Whatever the logic behind the love for objects or lack of it, desire cannot be denied. With objects, it seems, desire is most immediate. In a split second seeing turns into wanting.

You can blame it on adverts, consumer society, that everything has become a commodity (has it?), but can you not feel it? I used to envy people who said they cared little for material objects. They appeared to be above all this. The question is do I want to be above all this and where will I be if I step out of this? Yes, maybe in the ideal realm of greater freedom, but what will my connection to all this be then? Disdain? I’m not sure if I want to walk down city streets and look at friends’ apartments feeling disdain for the rest of my life. Another thing is whether I believe that the people I mentioned really were above loving material objects. I’m not so sure I do.

Regardless of whether we like it or not, it’s not just other people and broadly defined nature that is our surrounding. We place ourselves in a world of objects, and if we cut out desire, we will lose an element of our sight.

You are free to disagree with me on this. However, as I slowly come to terms with the turbulence of the love for objects, I see that there is more to it than vanity. A desired object comes to mean for me something that other things do not. This meaning attached to it makes me see it differently and thus changes also the way I see everything around it. And yes, I might be simply writing amateur philosophy to justify my base instincts. Additionally, it could be an apology of crowd madness or Freudian compensation.

There’s a green sweater on the bottom of this.

Last week was the Long Night of Shopping in Heidelberg. (Yes, another lame spin-off the fabulous idea of the Long Night of Museums.) It was astounding how it worked on people. There were no special discounts in any of the shops, no big sales. And yet everyone was on the Hauptstrasse in a buying frenzy. I didn’t have any big purchase plans and probably if it weren’t for the presence of a friend who is a fashion designer, I wouldn’t have bought anything. And indeed I didn’t buy the green sweater.

I have to admit, though, it was a coup de foudre situation. I saw it and loved it. It made me think of tree leaves in Ithaca (locus amoenus, see how the meanings attach themselves?), Pythagoras’ green chalk, my eyes (I am narcissistic), and I imagined how great it would be to have it and wear it. But reality stepped in after a second of daydreaming: I’m a poor student, as the proverb goes, I should save money for other things and, besides, what I need more is a winter coat, because the zipper broke in my old one. My irrational side still wanted to try it on, nevertheless.

When we came back to that shop later in the evening, I couldn’t find my size. So I took a few other things and went to the changing room. And there I saw it, my size, on a hanger, left behind. Or so it seemed, before a woman appeared from nowhere and reached for it. I asked her if she intended to buy it. “Oh yes,” she answered with — it might have been my imagination — a note of condescension in her voice. I felt a sudden surge of violence rising in me. This was a minor irony of life. After all, I wouldn’t buy the sweater anyway. But there were all these cruel things I wanted to say to her in that instant in order to assert my right to the sweater (let’s not forget that I was in love with it): that she is fifty and shouldn’t really be buying clothes like this, while my age gives me an obvious advantage (I don’t even believe in such crap), that she’s here with her husband and I am single for which the sweater would somehow compensate, that I need the sweater for a potential job interview (what job interview?)/ potential date (say what?), etc., etc., etc.

I didn’t say anything and she walked off with my loved one. It was probably the briefest love story in my life. I still find that sweater enchanting but am not even going to check if they have my size again.

For a moment there, it was only me, the object of my desire, and the evil woman who took it away from me. The world stopped. It’s the only kind of unrequited love I find palatable.

But first of all, before buying dresses, typing as quietly as I can, not to wake Asia, who does not even know I slipped her into my scribbling. Sneaking in friends’ names is a bit like using charms or pretending to be spiritually related to Frank O’Hara. Or showing off that one has read Barthes’ “The Reality Effect” and knows what Flaubert was thinking with the piano or whatever instrument was the bit of unchewed reality. But, above all, showing off that I remember a poem by Denise Duhamel where she says it more neatly.

Once again I find myself object-struck. Not with German milk cartons (which are modestly European in their sizes) but with cheap clothes and cheap Ikea stuff. Our little trip to Ikea with Asia and Dan was slightly epic in its mission of conjuring home in dorm rooms and rented apartments. Among my various purchases there was one I am particularly proud of: the cheap bamboo blinds I had always liked but never had a good reason to get. I put them up today after getting a set of curtain hooks at a big, confusing hardware store, where the assistant couldn’t help me although I put a lot of effort into explaining my intentions towards the curtain rail in German.

To this stream of non sequiturs let me add that I catch myself looking at gray clothes. I even bought a gray coat for my walks in autumn frost.

Sometimes, despite the blissful effect of the early autumn sun, I let slip in conversation a bit of my bitterness. And it goes like a snake in the grass or lead in a lipstick (a haunting factoid Asia scared me with), making me sound like a tragic recluse. As if I were just a step away from announcing how I enjoy to sit by the dead.

Yet since my apartment is in the basement I can neither jump out the window nor send notes to children in a small basket. What I can do is keep Asia’s fashion advice in mind and consider white dresses next time I think of buying another gray sweater. They would certainly go well with Rhine wine and the refrigerator magnet Gretchen promised to get me from Amherst. A homemade Emily Dickinson lurking in suggestions and objects… Because I’m back to Dickinson just like I’m back to drinking coffee.