the man of my life

I saw the most incredible concert tonight. Truly, it was like Shostakovich, but there were maybe 30 people there, 34 counting staff. And I know it's hackneyed, but I think of the thousands at the football matches.

The most beautiful woman came and sat by me a little ways in. I mean, I suppose there might be more beautiful women, but I'm old enough now to recognize when I've been unbelievably fortunate. She was with a man, but he was geeky and hardly talked to her. At the break, we talked -- her English was bad but my German was worse & it was amazing what she seemed to follow & she never got bored, just asked about what I did. She is an art therapist for handicapped children.

After the concert her companion spent more time with us -- he is a piano teacher and a performer who had played with the most famous person in the quartet. Still, she looked a bit embarrassed and also a bit of discontent when I eventually admitted my own partner was also male.

They left just after I'd ordered a schnapps. I tried to hang out for a while. The musician I'd come to see was initially effusive but eventually just talking to the other musicians --- she has an oddly childish persona but her music is massively intellectual, who knows. But after a short while I just downed it (a waste) & walked home. I thought somehow about the song I'd written my best friend, and wondered why I'd thought it was about friendship.

I shouldn't dwell on something sad
but we always had the biggest plans
now that the future's ours to take
I find I lost you somewhere on the way

Oh -- it leaves me so alone

[Second verse I've forgotten]

The next time you see me I'll be flying
I've had my fill of trying and lying for you.

....
You always got the best from me
....
I'm going to have to try my wings

The next time you see me I'll be flying
I've had my fill of trying and lying for you.

--

Amy, what you wanna do
I think I could spend some time
with you, maybe longer if I knew...

Now it's come to what you want you've had your way
And all the things you thought before just faded into gray
And can you see
That I don't know if it's you or if it's me
If it's one of us I'm sure we both will see
Won't you look at me and tell me...

I keep falling in and out of love with you
I keep falling in and out of love with you
Don't know what I'm gonna do
I keep falling in and out of love with you

-----

I had this theory tonight that human cognition / intelligence can only evolve so far. Genetically we find altruism because the rewards work on a biological timescale, but if we are too smart we find all kinds of free riding. Right now we are at an equilibrium where we are smart enough for simple free riding but too stupid to free ride on punishment. Football is ritualized warfare, so we waste huge resources punishing those who are bad enough to oppose us. And 90,000 (or really, 6.8 billion) of us miss the good concerts, but we are there for the football.

My lover will be here in two days.

My friend had to go wash his son
and I wanted to ask him after he left
whether the kid plugs the hole
where god, christmas and married parents used to be
or
does the kid just make the empty parts emptier?

When I'm with you I think I can face anything
even being without you
When I'm without you my life loses at least one dimension
goes back to a colourless past

You can adjust to anything, but why?

What would life be like if I had found someone who wanted children? Never empty, but even more ordinary.

43

I convince myself
we are monsters, not fit for
being reproduced

an otherwise happy day

seeing what people
you used to love turn in to
can be depressing

vienna (competition)

what intimate relationship
can you form with it --- all phallic towers
slice sky in stasis --- long ago thrust once

what intimate relationship
can it form with you --- changing your mind
with its words --- empire --- history

shifting stone and animals
apes running networks destabilise
the stone, the wires, the horses

what animate relationship
you conform with it --- infidelity in serial monogamy
you will leave it again, and it will wait

inthewind

In the late nineteeneighties I worked on the twentyeighthfloor
kitty-corner across the street from the world's tallestbuilding and
there was a new building going up
it was only girders then
and one day it was so windy and the girders somehow
made the wind ripple onefloor the windows on the tallest building
in waves we could watch them
the traders came in with their sandwiches and watched
the waves grew and then burst --- an office would burst out
like a dandelion its papers a bisected sphere
sometimes the Venetian blinds twisted like spiders
sailing up even though they were made of metal

and the traders laughed and atesandwiches and
we watched and
I felt bad and sorry thinking if it was my papers and
these must be lawyers offices so high facing the lake
their clients --- other people's lives in papers bursting like
dandelions but
it was funny enough to watch the world's tallest building falling
in pieces.

One trader said that one year they'd seen a couch fall out and
I got afraid that we would see a person fall out
and then
it wouldn't be funny anymore and so now it shouldn'tbefunny anymore
but it was quite funny and
we didn'tseeanyone fall out. The next day we saw
chunks of glass the size (but not shape) of bricks. I heard
a woman say she had been afraid
by the windows waving and a man told her
"do you know how thick those windows are?" but she had the sense
to beafraid anyway and she hid when the windows broke.

I think they broke each other once one started
those huge pointed bricks,
`shards' that must weigh pounds that swirled
out like the blinds like the papers hitting the other windows,
or was it the vacuum?

The glass destroyed a lot of cars in parkinglots but
not a singleperson
was hurt, they called it an actofGod while
we could see from our window it was an actof girders;
once the building was finished it didn't wave thewind.

shoes

your shoes by the door
make me briefly ecstatic
believing you're here

cat

Cat --- makes it across
the street, poses on the curb
remembering why

Flakey

I feel really trippy today. I think it's because I took paracutemal with codine last night when I didn't really need to, just because we were out of plain paracutemal. But still, that was way long ago.

Or maybe I feel flakey because I'm not. Although for some reason I am submitting another AI paper, to make my grant look good. I mean, I am revising an accepted paper. I tracked down a paper that was clearly by one of my reviewers' that he wanted added to a paper -- he wanted his work not ignored, but it is only in book chapters and the IBM magazine, though 15 years ago he used to publish in good journals. Another reviewer asked me to track down a PhD thesis by someone who's disappeared and turned out not to be relevant. Flakey flakey flakey. I hope I am in the real world now.

Even if I can't spell "paracutemal".

sun comes in --- a plant
escapes darkness & smoke, climbs
towards the window

every day dreams

Every day dreams
aren't realized -- options
dissolve and emerge


Every day dreams
aren't realized. Actions (wrong or right)
burn time into structures. Nothing reclaims.
Opportunities dissolve without
another mind ever visualising them; are taken
without being noticed. Accomplishments
accumulate transparently, their rate uncertain.
New chance emerges from old materials.
Fate is a dynamic illusion, constraining free will
and occasional reality.

romance / pathos

Flailing at tasks, I
force my own motivation
pathetic in need

Great things easily
in reach --- blocked only by my
loneliness and you

comfort in your arms
a well-justified cliche
warm veracity

he tells me not to
worry, shake, fear, doubt, wait, love
it's hard to obey

silent and dark his
unconscious company ---
his breathing wakes me

Vision Thing

I was (trying unsuccessfully to avoid) watching "Bruce Almighty" on the plane, and I wondered how anyone could find this inspiring. This stuff never happens to them or anyone they know or have ever seen news footage of --- it just goes to show how much the supernatural is not in our lives. Of course, I'd been thinking similar thoughts during the previous movie, "Love Actually", yet I'd been myself emotionally moved while intellectually annoyed by some of those plots. I suddenly realised that not only were these two questions the same, but the whole Bible was full of stories like "Bruce Almighty" -- totally implausible stories told earnestly and somehow inspiring the believers. Even reared a believer, I hadn't been able to understand why this stuff happened to Daniel but never to me. But this was in America, where every child believes they could grow up to be president.

Or do they? I do think that it's a different experience to be told consistently at school that your *not* the top of the class then to be periodically told you are, so maybe only 5 in 30 (or so) of us wonders why our lives aren't like fiction. But maybe not.

But more importantly to understanding what's going on in the world, somehow we emotionally identify enough with these heros that we feel better about ourselves --- and the strategies the hero took --- at the end of these happy-pop-fun movies. Even if we don't think it could happen to us. It must be the nature of language comprehension, having to embed yourself in the speaker's place, allows the control of social identity by those who create public narratives like this.

And the tragedies? When they really lead you on a garden path and then show you your own flaws... Maybe there's a reason the powerful have traditionally been the main supporters of high art, maybe it helps them really get a handle on real life. And Ian Rankin?

My favorite religious film is Dogma. People say that it is anti-religious, but I totally disagree. I think this is a movie by someone who's really thought about it, was raised in it, and says "wouldn't it be nice if the world really was like this?" I mean, clearly it shows some thought. Why is this the first plot revolving around the idea that a demon might suffer so much in hell it would be willing to end all creation to get out of it? Not that the (doing-)time-in-eternity thing makes sense, but...

distracted

When distracted she
pulls close --- head over shoulder
he can't see her face

premature snow melts
off parapets --- icy rain
rings buildings' bases

somewhere podunk but
beautiful --- she bides her time
working her way back

premature she is
not a person --a part of
her mother --- expelled

they try to take back
the things they sold you --- cash in
hand they see garbage

can I love cities
as much as you? bigoted
heterosexist!

look --- another plane
slowly diverging, are they
going to Praha?

Snow wins over rain
the city goes quietly
from grey to white

Midlife

seasons don't fear the reaper
nor do the wind or the sun or the rain

A weird thing about my life in Vienna is the occassionally-constant awareness of time. This is because of the train times --- commuting on a line with 30 minute intervals, and the underground predicts trains by the minute, as do the better strassbahn stops.

Although I always liked "Don't fear the reaper", I never really understood it --- it seemed to be about suicide, both accepting death and half-protesting its earl arrival. The main problem turned out to be that I mistook the line

Half of two is one;
here but now they're gone

as "here put down that gun" -- being half of two is bad, I don't want you to go. A song from two perspectives. But really, the song is saying that it will happen, but I'll still be yours, don't be afraid. Only the BoyFriend perspective.

For no clear reason I had suicidal impressions yesterday afternoon -- thoughts of throwing myself in front of trains. I usually only get that when my mother visits. I still can't figure out what triggered it this time. I told my partner, and he said "Don't do that," and I said "I never have," and he said "It only takes once." I hadn't really thought of that for some reason. I said "Not if the train is pulling into the station," which he acknowledged.

I am deeply unhappy to be leaving Vienna today for reasons I can't put my finger on --- I suppose it is because I'm happy --- does that necessitate sadness? Even though I have a very interesting two weeks ahead of me, most of which (by one day) will be with my partner. And a very interesting week behind me, I might add. I was positioned as someone very important in front of an international audience (twice) and I did well.

There's a great Sonic Youth song about Karen Carpenter and her relationship with her mother. The chorus goes

she says "You ain't never goin anywhere
You ain't never goin anywhere"
I ain't never goin anywhere
I ain't never goin anywhere

My mom was never like that, at least not explicitly. Maybe it's passive aggressive. She always said I was God's gift and bound for great things (and so is everyone), but there's weird stuff around the edges. I never noticed until my partner was trying to figure out one day early in our relationship why I'd gone from ecstatic to depressed while he was in the bath. Nothing had happened, oh, except I guess I read a letter. From my mom. He read it and showed me how destructive it was only one level down. Eventually I took her to task for things like that. My sister even said the emails that were to us both were way weirder than the ones just to her. I think some of it is corrected now.

Maybe the problem is that "(and so is everyone)" part --- I also love the Garrison Keeler line "all the children are above average". There is a lot of that in European intelligentsia now -- the conflict between the egalitarian / Marxist ideal and meritocracy / identification and support of excellence. I think the Marxist ideology would be winning more except for the pressures of external competition with the USA and Asia, which forces them to acknowledge what actually works.

Not clear what this has to do with yesterday afternoon.

Too bad solving the problems at hand doesn't motivate support of excellence, rather than the pressures of external competition.

grrrr

I am sick of people being afraid of me. Just because I am smart & autistic. I have never been malign to anyone, I love structure. I only want to grow the pie, not take a bigger piece. I don't believe in zero sum games.

Maybe it's time I start. Why are people so afraid? Is there room at the top? I am 42, maybe I should fucking take the top if it is available. I won't be powerful forever, if I even am now.

Most recent haiku (from a text)

Autumn beer garden
the city at dusk -- only
one person early

Vienna a few weeks ago

Not only am I too busy to blog, I'm too busy to post blogs I make off line.

I just looked at Salon.com (my old favourite news source) for the first time in weeks, and it seemed like rubbish --- immature tabloid. Weird.


----

Friedensbrücke --- a
pretty girl runs to the tram
under a full moon

Tram 33 --- a
pretty girl runs through traffic
on a moonlit bridge

Full moon --- the Danube
a pretty girl weaves to catch
the tram on the bridge

Must admit, the last one is far the best. I suppose it's the only one
I should have posted, but I find process interesting.

------

Foreign train station
alone in the car --- hearing
unknown announcements

-------

two women eating
sushi --- one in a long dress
uses fork and knife

-------

Diana has more
pictures being published than
anyone alive

no angst, no poetry

I've started my sabbatical now & it is going pretty well. Anyway, we were together for weeks and so I was less lonely and not blogging. Though I used to before we got different cities. But the sabbatical is focusing my mind & I am also not reading as much news of the world / politics, but mostly doing science or old jobs that need finishing.

Still, tonight is my first night alone here, so...

Malynne

I dreamed about Malynne last night. It was a stress dream, because of the impending moves. I was in Chicago, at some big meeting or event or organization --- it wasn't clear if I was visiting or if I was living there temporarily, but there were all these women living in very sophisticated enormous tent structures, and somehow I wound up having dinner (cafeteria style) with two women I was vague or recent acquaintances with, and then Malynne was there. She looked at me straight in the face so I knew she recognized me, and then she turned up her chin at me so I couldn't really see her face anymore but she she was still quite attractive. She was snubbing me and then she was just gone (from the table.) Hardly a dream; she's been snubbing me for 20 years, if not much longer.

Maybe that's why I listened to Bjork after my partner left. Married to myself.

3 precious days

You come to me
when we should be working
suicidal depression
gives way to our blessed normalcy
a life worth living, maybe two...
why am I jealous
you bring our lives back in just one night
why should I begrudge
a mother her evening?
limits I set, she observes
and we lose the only evening of sunshine
we have together.