12.17.06 (5:45am)
I'm hungover right now. It was really smart of me to get drunk the night before having to board an early flight to New York. I'm at the airport at the moment. I just finished eating a teriyaki chicken bowl (5:45am), only it was teriyaki chicken over mexican rice and beans. Some lady just put a cat in a bag down on the seat right next to me. She just left. The lady sitting next to the cat is yelling over to the lady who's cat this belongs to. My grammar is atrocious right now. Wonderful. Well, I have a story to tell. I'm not sure how to start, but I will start at where it first became a story inside my head. So, I was waiting for my taxi this morning and I called home. I was telling my mom how I hoped my taxi (that I called the day before) wasn't running late, because about a year ago I called a taxi and they were around 15-20 minutes late, and so I called a different cabby. It turned out that both showed up at the same exact time, and I went into the cab that I called secondly, because the other guy was late, and that's that. The taxi driver, whose cab I left abandoned, was obviously very pissed off, but I wasn't in the mood to care. So, this happened a year ago. Anyway, so, back to this morning, the cab driver shows up while I'm on the phone with so and so. She (so and so) was enlightening me about her sexual escapades with a fellow drunkard at the party. As soon as I got off the phone, the driver immediately started to speak to me. He said that he recognized my address and remembered that some time ago I had called up two cabs, both of which showed up at the same time, and I did not get into his cab. He thought it was because his vehicle was unmarked. He kept asking if I remembered this. I hesitated to admit at first, but oviously this story was ironically fresh in my mind. After a while, I acted as though a jolt of electricity went through my body. Oh! Yeah! Sorry about that. The story continues, but I'm bored of this story already. Basically there were no harsh feelings. He gave me his card (it turns out he is the owner of the cab company) and told me to call him whenever (I need a cab)...The ride cost $39, I gave him $45, he wished me a Merry Christmas.
12.17.06 (9:30 pm)
Took a cab to Gershwin Hostel. This place is retarded. It looks like Andy Warhol threw up in here. I'm sharing a room with possibly 19 other people. As of now, I've only met 2. They are from Denmark and have been travelling around the world for the past 3 months. It feels so free (mmmm...cliches) to be alone somewhere, almost like I'm lost, but not entirely. It's expensive to travel alone. It's dangerous to travel alone.
12.18.06 (10:00 am)...on my way to Dia Beacon.
I pretty much have no fucking clue. I mean, I'll just walk around, wait around, until something happens. For some reason I have been feeling like I'm in Chicago right now. Maybe I'm in the right place, I mean, because there are two girls, one on either side of me, sitting on the ground, they look like hipster art kids. One is knitting, the other is flipping through an art history book and wearing Dr. Martens. Suddenly I miss my burgundy patent leather Dr. Marten boots. I hope I don't miss the 1051. I don't know if that's the time of departure or the number of the train.
So, my sleeping situation. What weirdness. I should probably get earplugs and an eye mask. Even around midnight, when everyone has returned to the room and is finished using the bathroom, there are many noises to cause alarm to the light sleeper. There are the people in the hallway using the internet and laughing at their various cellphone rings they are testing out. Also, there is this varying mechanical sound coming from the heater (close to my head), it sounds like a trail of marbles dropped from the top of the Empire State building and down into a manhole. And then, when one wants to get up, get dressed and leave, one has to do it with the lights off, or else be the only asshole in the room who doesn't.
12.18.06 (11:30am)...inspired to write abstract nonsense after reading Rebecca Solnit.
Thinking about how what is, no longer exists. How we do not really experience the world around us, we experience ourselves through the world around us, just as we are never listening/speaking to one another, instead, we do these things for ourselves. We are really listening and speaking to ourselves and ourselves alone. It is not possible to loose our stories before engaging with one another. And, in much the same way, it is not possible to loose oneself. It is possible to loose the world around us, especially since it may very well already be lost. The only fathomable way that one might be able to loose themselves, is if they have not found themselves to begin with.
12.18.06 (3:30pm)
Dia Beacon is quiet, white, towering. Donal Judd and his silly disappearing slopes. Hardly any of the pieces in the galleries are lit. Because of this, the eye is extremely sensitive to disappearing and appearing light, of the natural sort. Specifically, I am speaking of the enormous semi-cylindrical Richard Serra piece which rest firmly on the ground. But, as one walks around and through each piece, one sees slivers of light pass through spaces between the floor and the rusted ore. Someone, about 3 or 4 days before I left Oakland, was just talking about Bruce Nauman's fish fountain. From far away, the sound of water seems to be artificial, perhaps because of the industrial warehouse it is in. And yet, as soon as you turn the corner, droplets of water start to hit the face, and one sees the water spurting out from randomly punctured holes in the body of bronze fish. Long plastic tubes trail down from their bellies into a basin. Directly opposite the piece is the only window on the floor of that gallery. A wall of window. I look out at the horizon, listening to the water fall.
12.18.06 (10:30pm)
I pooped.
I would leave it at that, but I have something else on my mind. So, I went into a church today. After I turned my cellphone off, I slowly walked in and entered from a side door and continued to walk towards the back. Right away, in the back corner, I encountered a homeless man who looked like he had been camping out for a while. He had his cellphone plugged into an outlet. I blindly stepped over the chord and continued walking towards the altar, but stopped in the middle and sat down in a pue. From the corner of my eye, I saw a woman placing her fingers in a fluid motion along certain premeditated places on her body. I wondered if she could sense that I was not of the same faith, that I was simply observing. I was staring intently at the works of art in front of me. The mother mary draped in white cloths, the jesus figure drench in gold, his small white hands gracefully clasped together. I was a witness, but nothing was happening. As everyone but the homeless man had left, I proceeded to move forward until I was sitting right in front of a stately depiction of the virgin. I started to draw her, once again, feeling self-conscious that someone might be watching me. WHOA!!!! interjection here, there is a man who just sat down in the booth in front of me (i'm in a jewish deli at the moment, writing about my day earlier on), he's bleeding all over his face is bleeding all over the place and he's talking nonsense. The waiter came over and told him to wash his face. They finally took his order. This potentially could be a problem. Okay, back to the church. So, I was drawing, feeling perverse and such, while observing these paintings as though I was in a museum. I begin to notice the similarities between both institutions. A looming feeling of someone watching. A feeling of having to pay attention, to control the thoughts. A quietness, a pureness, a focal point. How does this iconic face of Jesus differ when placed in a museum? Is the museum a stand-in for the church? Jesus is an ugly void.
12.18.06 (2:01am)
What if pockets were gloves?
You stick your hands inside your pockets and they fit perfectly to your fingers, gloves.
12.19.06 (8:16pm)
motherfuckmotherfuckmotherfuck. goddamn tired is what i am. bringin the whiskey downtown with a soda. hella.
12.19.06 (10:21pm)
"That is sooooo Dada" - mike.
12.20.06 (2:34pm)
I saw Vincent Gallo on Prince Street today. I texted my friends, and none of them knew who he was.
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