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30 January 2002
the bigger mess the greater bless
'Keep on trucking mama, truck my blues away'. Live up to the promise.
29 January 2002
celebrate no evil
21 January 2002
SimSearch Sim Sala Bim
A search loop starts to draw our attention. When I started to publish my top 20 monthly search hits, I wondered what this would do to my search hits in terms of attention focus, and lo! a pattern emerges with the warez hungry SimCrowd, hitting me again and again and again for serial numbers and whatnot. The reputation document is the second most addressed after index.html. Before I'll be SimService all over, I added what I'd owe you to search me for. I want my reputation back!
routine check
Suddenly today at the Moulin, when scanning the terrain, I discover my 'here' entering a new sphere. The odd jobs become the god jobs. I see continuity in my relationship to the bodies, volumes, materials around me. It is acquired presence, never to come instantaneously.
18 January 2002
theatrum forensis provisorium
provisorium forensic theatre south wall
Like some kind of contemporary agit prop site. Where work in progress can be displayed just to that effect: to (be in) progress. A stage and soap box cum poster wall and window. A desk. A portal. A hub. A battle field.
forensic
Latin forensis public, forensic, from forum forum
1: belonging to, used in, or suitable to courts of judicature or to public discussion and debate
2: argumentative, rhetorical
3: relating to or dealing with the application of scientific knowledge to legal problems
16 January 2002
weblag
I suffer. While the battle continues. From my presentation at the Jan van Eyck's opening of the academic year, today:
Paper printing changed the world's memory, electronic digital communications recasts it: under both technologies interaction and communication are re-invented, re-purposed and given a whole new 'habit'—daily life is informed in completely different ways.
Nokia shifted from the one abundant local material resource of wood, for paper production, to exploit another natural Finnish asset: low density demographics, meaning a long distance, person-to-person communication market.
A minority of the 5M Finns live not on the southern coast, but dispersed in the wooded inland, in small concentrations, amidst those trees that they were early to recognize could feed 'their' industry. Nokia could recast their company from an industry that turned trees into paper, that then could be sent from one tree to another, tree-to-tree as it were, where ever the other person would live, whatever tree he could be addressed at—to wireless mobile communication, person-to-person, no matter where the other person lives.
From trees for paper pulp via impregnated paper for cable insulation and rubber boots to mobile telecommunication: this is an extremely successful story of recast design. And it still is for Nokia. Moreover, it happened there and then, this particular story could only emerge where there is plenty trees and plenty space to cross. A story of material-to-information shift, it is the story of our communication habits.
I discussed two kinds of mimicking in design: McLuhan's rear-view mirror effect (the first cars like horse-less carriages) and the stylization of new media in the old (print with a screen look, inviting interaction where there can't be, like in Archis magazine; in the past: streamline for products that will never have to attain any speed at all, like the toaster, an example introduced before by Archis' designer Daniel van der Velden), I continued about the documented life, splendid isolation, and to the 'mediated body' discussion I contributed medical self examination and diagnosis as examples of the new locus for the theatrum anatonicum. Someone brought forth the Körperwelten displays for our fascination with a body in life-like death, but for me a decisive change is made when medical data visualization is not handed down to you by science or the medical discipline, but generated self monitored by consumer machines that belong as much to the digital lifestyle gear as a DVD or MP3 player and hook up to the same hubs.
6 January 2002
songs of the internal narrators
Hey Mitsu, guess what? My internal narrators keep speaking in tongues to me! So much for a sense of humor: one just isn't quite enough! In the absence of a benevolent brain proper they seriously discuss and interpret my every sound and sting and itch from the bowels, the blood and muscular vessels, the largest, the smallest organ and cerebral vacuities, the latter feeling rather like a turned inside-out lunar globe implant, including impoverished force G: much to the enjoyment of the selfish narrators.
'Mister!, Mister!' one loyal under assistant bell boy narrator runs up to me shouting, 'Jane and Tiramisu III are getting married!' Hey, I'm their Best Man... guess what makes sense. Please stay around while I'm at the wedding, where happy ractors J+T3 undoubtedly will split the cake, and have it. If I may advise you, go have a chat with the other lonely patients at the Sanny Side of the Street! Oh, and tell them to come pick up their CD players, DVD cameras and shiny laptops soon.
Suddenly, in the manner of 'O Tannenbaum', I hear a song echo from the garden. "I-den-ti-ty, I-den-ti-ty, Thou Art My E-ve-ry-Dai-ly Me / In Any Case A Chocolate Bun / Will First Increase, Then Kill the Fun..." I pull myself up from the bed at my black and blue Marken scarf and stumble to the window, to burn a tiny lens in its frosty pane with my hot-temp breath. Well of course! It is my internal visualizers, taking down the last Christmas decorations before they will roll in the Easter Eggs which they have been preparing in the night kitchen. After the wedding cake had been finished of course. This internal kin at least knows how to collaborate! And pull off something else than egotistic gibberish! Oops! My Intestinal Gourmands cue me: we don't want to be late for that wedding! Cheerio!
5 January 2002
bed encore
(my wish granted? So soon?). Another evening I see coloring from the bed. For three days I don't leave it but to go to the bathroom. As soon as I get up my head drops to the floor and I have to search for it. I still have this fever but it doesn't force my head down anymore. So this afternoon I upgrade to sanatorium style self-nursery for an hour. I open the windows at noon to let in the sun, turn the available daybed 90° CW (the old trick, if you'll remember), push it as far out onto the balcony as I can and cover myself in a 100% Merino ('original Vithermo Gesundheitsdecke, Export-Modell, Typ Merino Schaf—Im Dienste der Gesundheit') blanket, sticking out my head, full in the sun. I close my eyes. Ah! Let the magic begin. Stardust sprinkles on the burning red eyelids. At least it gets me back my sense of humor. Little do I know I will need it.
no bed is an island
Not because Gil takes my photograph when she finds me, telling me that I look a lot worse than just having a flu, but praising the clever set-up at the same time. Not because she comes in to wake me up to drive Rolf to Clamecy, for a football tournament. Not because I safely do so and pick up my first crispy French Euraws, and return myself to a horizontal position, all within half an hour. Not because I hear Roemer and Jet babble in the next room all during my half-nap in the two hours following. There might have been something adding up there. But my true wit is called to the rescue when I hear wild chicken panic and dark barking, Gil clapping hands from the library window. I jump up to see a rather large canine chase one of our last remaining two chickens (another one disappeared yesterday afternoon, prey to hungry wildlife, closing in on the habitats). Knowing that Gil's intervention won't include anything else but clapping from that window I hurry into some cloths and run outside after the dog. We phone its hunter owner on his portable, whose 4WD then appears out of the woods in front of the gate in no-time. Back in bed I take my temperature and wait for the sun to set.
2 January 2002
rebound
Found my bed twice during the day. No energy tonight, but to build a fire in the bedroom and fix myself hot squashes, listen to female vocals. Will start reading Karen Armstrong's A History of God and Through a Narrow Gate, but in which order?
ah no... a change of plans. I'm down with the flu.
1 January 2002
we're well into the 2000s by now
NQP to self. And HNY to the rest of you. Third millennium so far didn't do a whole lot for me. After this morning's MP3-supported boogie night on that cool moon lit LGT hill, suddenly I realize it hit off for real: #20020101 already is a different story. At 3am I find Rolf, stoned from sleep, wide eyed, glued to a Nintendo console in 15 year old M.'s room, in the small house next door, from where he had not returned with the other kids. On the couch, under a black and white towel, Roemer has been asleep since a couple of hours, after we lit the sparkles and he had his chocolate cake. Florence and Patrick did a great decoration job and everybody's cooking was major. From the same site I was surprised to receive an email one early January 1 morning two years ago, when Philippe and Delphine, Patrick and Florence sent their love and y2k wishes down to the Moulin, after having visited NQP and lemoulindumerle.com. Last year we were invited to take John, Kristi and Kate up, this year Joke was just as enchanted by the folks and merry atmosphere at the Grange.
Meanwhile #20020102 has arrived when I take down these notes. Today was a calm aftermath, most of it spent in bed (what an unusual but absolutely comfortable place to be! Why do we torture ourselves spending time outside of it?) and outdoors. We had some more champagne at Hans and Rini's, who later joined us to finish oysters, carrots, pasta, chocolate cake, apricot pie, leftover drinks. Stir up the fire one more time. Joke has packed, the Moulin is in silence. The moon lights a calmer Beuvron.
31 December 2001
Latest From The YMMV Headline Desk At Moulin Du Merle—In Which:
Woodpeckers Emerge; Roemer Teaches A Rubber Hot Water Bottle To Walk; Oil Balls Are Prepared à l'Ancienne; Yes We Have No Fire Works; At Least A Dozen Wild Boars Run Up Hill; A Dear Old Friend Has Been Operated Upon; Indian Winter Shows In The Musical Preferences; A Fire Crosses A Wall On Its Way To The Hall; No Home Is An Island (Old News); La Grange Treillard Danceton; (Related) Three Hours Up And Down And All Around Never Stop Boogie; Toast Titanium Provides Chants Dissidents; Tarala Taralala Dub Dub Dub; Drop Temperature; Et Cetera.
30 December 2001
no house is an island
...but water comes as no surprise to this mill. After yesterday's downpours from hell, which, with all the traffic on the road for New Year, made for a difficult and dangerous drive down, today's high waters were expected. Welcoming us back to the Moulin du Merle is a furious Beuvron. When I wake up at 5:30 it is in the front yard. I check the sousterrain. Nothing. Also at 7:30 the cellars are still dry. I set free the chickens and ducks, the latter visibly excited with their element's gain, I open the fresh water filter at the source, which had again sealed off with clay particles, causing no water to run from the taps last night. Water and more water is the story of this place, in winter and spring seasons.
Slowly it creeps around the house at 9:30—without it to be expected to reach critical height this time, but just. It is literally at the threshold. We haven't bothered to lift the wares onto the tables in Gil's studio. G. and Joke, who travelled down with us, are still in bed. R+r are hooked up to r's sixth birthday yesterday presents. I'm my mobile self, situated in the dining room for now, vigilant.
previous floods
14 March 2001
28 December 1999
Later today the upstream water slowly withdraws, the Beuvron still pushing wildly through the mill's canal. It freezes lightly. The sun is out all day. At Baptiste Binet's parents we enjoy the apéro, tasting their home made sweet wines. Tomorrow night we are invited at Florence and Patrick's in La Grange Treillard, like last year. No home is an island. This is the end of the year 2001.
nqpaofu.com 2002 jouke kleerebezem Notes Quotes Provocations and Other Fair Use