Oude Koeien Uit de Sloot Halen

2003-12-10T01:10:00.000Z

Now I’ve closed out the cold it’s all airless, and I can barely think. Feels like being in fog, and always either I’m too cold or drowsy. I’d like to feel on my skin the heat of indoors, but breathe the air of outside.

I went back to work today after a short period of pretending to be ill. I don’t think they missed me for the work I do, but some colleagues were pleased to see me all the same.

When *Inka suggested we go for a walk in the sun it was pleasing. Once we got some streets from the office she very firmly stopped me from walking then hugged me very tightly. So I cried, because I had been so much in the wrong, then we went to the café that sells the best cake in Belgravia.

I’m not accustomed to shouting at my friends, as I did with *Inka a few weeks ago. It’s not me, yet I did it, and I feel so foul. For context, the whole thing with her brother came to a point, I wondered how far I could push it and found her limit. She certainly put her feet down.

To respond I said that she made me seem not good enough for her brother (I’ve been calling him *Bror in this, which is Dansk for ‘brother’). Even as I said that I knew it to be wrong, that she must know that what he has with his girlfriend is better, stronger, longer than what he might get with me. And *Inka knows her from way back, too, so she was being loyal to both, and I recognise that this outweighs her favour to me having a little bit of a good time. Also I said that she was mothering *Bror, again pretty stupid, it’s just what relatives do for each other, a thing I’ve seen with brothers and sisters that I kind of admire. To finish I made a comment something like that just because her dating life was now over she shouldn’t stop others having fun. Perhaps that was the stupidest thing I said, when she reacted she went very cold, which I wouldn’t have believed she could do. A little part of me was even scared.

But so now we’ve made up, she still wants to be my friend, so much more than I deserve. I’m invited for Christmas lunch, but I guess I should leave it until *Bror goes back home, otherwise it’s awkward.

I was never this destructive before. What am I becoming?

If I walk quite fast I can get to here, and back, during a lunch break.

2003-12-07T22:09:00.000Z

I’ve been from a whisper to a scream, but written nothing here.

Things have happened, but nothing has changed.

I’m just going to start posting photographs until someone tells me to stop.

In M1crosoft Word you cannot name a file ‘nul’. It’s reserved for a device or something.

2003-11-08T22:46:00.000Z

So *Inka and I did not go to see Freddie Ljungberg, but that’s okay, ‘cause what I’m all about right now is the real thing. Problem that I don’t know that I should. *Bror has (you could already guess it) a little friend back home. *Inka speaks highly of her. Vertigo-type highly of her, In fact, I think she’s pointing it to me, she must be getting that I’m all sorts of into *Bror, and I would say he might be into me. But *Inka doesn’t want he and she to get derailed by whatever might be between he and me before he returns at New Year.

So I guess that makes three of us! Lucky chick, to be getting that man coming back to her on Sunday, 4 January. I don’t resent it of her in the littlest. I just want this much [holds my fingers a small distance apart. Or perhaps some more, ‘cause in my experience would not be so satisfying]. I’m not wanting to change the world.

For all that I want this, *Inka is a friend, good friend, I couldn’t be happy to fall out with her on this. Do I want luxury, or necessity?

Matters nearly progressed earlier today. We were out as a family plus tagalong *Sophie, until *Inka and her child and man went home, but *Bror wanted to stay in town for Guy Fawkes day fireworks, so I went with him to the Embankment. They sent off the fireworks from a boat on the river, they were okay but not as good as I expected. I wanted to take *Bror away to a bar and talk, not be in all this distracting noise and light.

Felt a little dangerous when we were leaving, it felt possible we might go on somewhere else, there was a moment of feeling awkward, but instead we went in separate directions. The District train took me home too fast this time and I felt flat like old soda all evening, ‘til now and I guess I’ll go to bed.

Ah fuck, I don’t know what I want at all. I’ve just got this feeling of want.

2003-11-05T22:27:00.000Z

*Inka and I are going to see Freddie Ljungberg in Selfridges tomorrow. Leaving work early to get a good place and no-one will stop us.

Otherwise mostly everything is crap. All for now.

2003-10-31T00:13:00.000Z

DIY Pest Control Products
Pesticides, traps, ultrasonics etc Next Day to your home or business.

Endangered Species Act
Report accurate or inaccurate data alleging demise endangered species

Related Searches - squirrel monkey - swimming pictures

This is what I get for mentioning cute and furry rodents, the top window to my page looks like an e-mail in-box of a true and dedicated pervert.

I went out for a walk at lunchtime and a few streets away I saw one of those photocopied signs in a polythene cover, for a small dog that had been lost somewhere. These signs depress me a little because I always think of the dog and how it feels to be lost.

Back at work I mentioned the sign and *Pablo said that many of the signs now are fakes, just promoting things in a round and about way. I felt like arguing with him, to say that it looked genuine enough to me. But it is so difficult with him, I think he could be patronising even when he is wrong. He perhaps thinks I am naïve or something, which is frustrating. Next time I open my mouth at work, I will wait until he is out of the room.

Or maybe I will just keep myself to myself. That works, too.

I have heard that people who have taken a lot of lysergic acid dythalmide for years afterwards will get ‘flashbacks’ into those altered states that they had experienced, often very brief but sometimes vivid, occasionally unsettling. There seems to be no singular circumstance that will trigger these moments of recall, though they are more likely to happen when the person is travelling.

Yesterday I was walking quite slowly past the bookstalls beneath Waterloo Bridge. And I had the most intense visual memory of Amsterdam Avenue. This is a place I have only been to once before, I have only seen it in daylight for maybe fifteen minutes, maximum. I had been to a party in an apartment somewhere to the rear of the Lincoln Centre and stayed over. Then in the early Monday morning I went to catch the cross-town bus, which was the #57, that comes up as far as the mid-sixties at that point. I was not even very impressed by my surroundings. What I mean by that is that they were not distinctive. Perhaps I noticed the comparative newness of some of the blocks, they seemed grouped, a little like the blocks to the due east of the city centrum in Rotterdam. But, whatever, they made little impression on me at the time.

Why now? It is Autumn, then it was Spring. Why there – concrete abounds, but otherwise the environment is quite different. Was it a smell, New York trash borne on the slipstream of a garbage truck recalled by the odour from the bins at the side of the NFT café? Something in the light? I cannot explain.

Who knows. But I remember that night in the Upper West Side, it was a good night and I carried the glow of it with me all that sleepless morning after. So I treasured the sudden unbidden memory today and will not question its origin.

I’m trying too hard to write good English and as a result it seems I’m pompously addressing a child. Since this is a diary, the child I’m addressing is me.

2003-10-26T00:38:00.000Z

Red X brought to you by my lazingness and mediocrity of the number one hundred and six in public places.

When I first started typing this last night was drawn up smelling my knees. I don’t know why it’s so, but it’s comforting. The left smells no different to the right, they smell of soap and jeans and something else which must be me, I guess.

On Tuesday it’s a dinner at *Inka’s. Today I went for a little lunch with her and her brother who is to stay in London until Christmas, he just arrived. His head is almost shaved to show the slightest blond fuzz that glowed in sunlight behind him in the café, tall, and rather cultured. Cheekbones. Blue eyes too. Severely blue. Oh, hej!

So I’m saying, “Oh yuh, I’m going to the John Currin exhibit at the little gallery in Hyde Park. Must see it today, ‘cause it’s closing next week, last chance.” And *Inka says [I’ll name him when I know him better. Going to have to get to know him better.] *-----‘s at the kulture, too, he’s going to a football game this afternoon.” And then he mentions he isn’t sure how’s getting to there.

I could show him! With my A to Z, we’ll both get to Queen’s Park Rovers! I could watch a football game! But I’m going to see John Currin. Me and my large mouth.

So by the by, the Currin pictures were hideous, ugly, I hate them and I always will. It was good to get out of there and see people that were not big-eyed freaks. This has nothing to do with anything.

On Tuesday it’s a dinner at *Inka’s. I’m teenage again.

2003-10-23T18:49:00.000Z

Other than being in the city this day, I was feeding a squirrel in Hyde Park, sea-salt and black pepper crisps, mostly to entice him to hang out with me so I could take his photograph. But he was rather shy, would take my food but moved so as not to be facing me, as if offended. I never saw that before, and I have expertise in the psychology of fed squirrels. So there was rather a great deal of feeding, while I helped him to trust me. And I suddenly got worried, so much salt, did I give him a sodium overdose? So I got out my bottle of water and tried to get him to take some from that, but he wouldn’t trust it, no way. In a manner that he thought I was maybe giving him a poison, and I’uld be stuffing his corpse and putting him in a display cabinet. Which was not my intention.

I don’t think we had chemistry, he and me, sometimes it’s that way

Also I went for lunch with someone who I think could be a new friend, I’ll call her D for now, ‘cause no name yet seems quite right. She works in my office but in a different section, we know each other as she smokes and I always insist to take my coffee outside to make a true break, we’re often on the fire escape. Was fun, we went to a restaurant a distance from work, so as to meet no-one we know, as if having an affair. Offices do that to people though.

I think she wanted some one to talk to. She’s not from England, so we have that in common. She moved over in March with her boyfriend and now they’ve parted and she’s alone, which is good and bad. Mostly bad. She says she can cope with the breaking up quite easy, but she said a thing that to hear sounds funny, but also it’s touching. And so true that it hurts to hear it. I think I nearly flinched.

*D said she always felt very lucky to have this man, because she knows that she’s quite ugly. Now that she is mostly past the pain of the break up, and thinking of the future, will she find another? She lived in the same house as her man, they got to know each other so well before they got together, he didn’t see her anymore as the ugly girl that you don’t check out. For each next man, they’ll see her and no situation can bring them to her as happened for the last one.

I couldn’t find words to say. *D was forthright, matter-in-fact. As to say – ‘just is’. Not asking for sympathy, or even a solution. And she’s right. She is on the ugly side of medium. Uglier than average. I can only picture her with an ugly man, if a man at all. Otherwise, her appearance is deterring. Her children will be ugly too. Maybe she won’t have any. This is so unfair. Nothing’s fair, war and hunger not fair, but this was striking to me, today. *D is a lovely young woman with intelligence and humour. In nature, an angry, poisonous animal is visibly that. With the humans, some beasts are beauties, this is so wrong.

A person can say that we see other qualities, that the personality is more important than the façade. I agree. But the façade remains, we can’t make it different simply by our extreme wish. *D’s appearance will always be the but, but, but.

And I feel bad for feeling lucky that I look okay.

2003-10-19T21:54:00.000Z

Seems like all the time I’ve been resident here in London the Circle train has been interrupted. Always I’m trying to make the right-angular journey from Notting Hill or likewise and they say no Circles are on the way, change by the District at Earl’s Court. And I’m thinking, they’re lying, ‘cause I’ll be waiting there to transfer for the longest time while a Circle behind sneaks around tippy-toe, almost empty ‘cause people believed the announcement. Nothing is logical Underground. A co-worker rides in from Southfields, she says you must ignore the announcements and signs and look for the design and shape of the train to see which way it goes. My method is to differentiate by seat-covers, but first I have to peer inside the carriage…

And most every weekend the Circle is not a circle, it’s broken, a chain with some links missing. Today and tomorrow on the map it makes a kind of G shape. It should be an O or more correctly a 0 on its side. I don’t know why I think this matters so much.

Today I tried to go to Hampstead, to see the autumn colours on the big heath. But the Northern train had other plans, so I went to take the 24 bus lijn and everyone else had the same idea. Two went past my stop, almost exploding with people, then I gave up and went to Regent’s Park instead. Wasn’t equal though, too flat.

It’s just pathetic that my writing of English has in truth become worse since I arrived here. If I spend another full year here, I will likely not be able to express myself at all! It’s a nonsense. Also it’s problematic, in my job it was originally proposed that I write intermittent articles for publications (all trade or specialised, don’t ask!). Was going to understand the subject for a few months, then begin. But nearly a year has passed and nothing. They saw samples of my written work when I applied, I guess they think someone else might have written them for me.

I did a lot of work on it last year to develop a style of writing, it was my thing to hide in when things got bad. Something I could do at the library, where I got to know a pair of cool Moroccan girls whose English compositions were way better than mine, we would swap them. They’uld ask what I thought of theirs and I knew inside I wasn’t qualified to judge. Not just because of the subjects.

All the time I was improving my English, I guess it was from knowing that I might move here next. Now I’m here, it’s deteriorating, it doesn’t only have no style, it oftentimes isn’t correct.

I went to the Waterloo Bridge book market again, and restricted myself to just one book, it’s the autobiography of Andre Malraux. I had a difficulty with him when was at school, but I’m over that now and I forgive him. It’s an English translation, from now on I’m reading only English. And the writing is good, or maybe the translator is good. Team effort?

This for example: “A shaggy little bearded fellow, buried in his white locks like a cat’s paw in a ball of wool…” You can really see it.

And made me laugh, an ancestor of Malraux was asked what he wanted to do when he grew up:
“ ‘I shall work at the Academie Francaise.’
‘What the devil will you do there?’
‘There’d be M. Victor Hugo, M. de Lamartine, M. Cuvier, M. de Balzac…’
‘And you?’
‘I should be behind the desk.’
‘What the devil would you do behind the desk.’
‘I’d say to them: “Take it back and do it again!” ’ ”

What a kid. I laughed out right there on the train.

On the back of the cover are two prices, one has been deleted by the used bookseller, but he left the other price, 10/-, which means 10 schillings, which they used to use in England before 1971. So the book is quite a bit older than me. Like a wise older brother.

I might phone *Benny tonight, he lives out on the black line. I’m not truly concerned that he might have been caught in the Underground smash, but it’s an excuse to speak to him, catch up some.

2003-10-17T22:02:00.000Z

Yesterday *Patty told me, ‘You look tired, Missy. Too much bed, not enough sleep, yeah.’ Oh, I would, yuh.

How can I be this tired? It’s the exhaustion that’s travelling a thousand kilometres in a day and not touching the paving for more than 5 minutes. Where does it go? Rise in the a.m. only thinking of returning to bed. I’m under a ridge of barometric pressure or some such. Fretty, can’t settle.

This is what it’s like, I must be known in the local supermarkt as the Girl Who Only Buys Two Items. There is a trolley lane, and a basket lane, and five items or less lane, then a *Sophie lane. I try to every instance use a different cashier, but in the evenings it’s difficult, fewer staff. But it’s my way of breaking the evening, otherwise I’ll only read myself into a sleepy state again.

Or I can ride a bus a few stages and walk home. It’s getting to be a different experience now the windows glow with lives on my way back, and if I catch the 49 I always cross the bridge to see the water with a little light on it. You should see the adjacent bridge, Albert, it’s something special at night.

I told a few weeks back about the girl across the road, well this evening she is at home to guests, it’s a girly party affair, fitted tightly into her sitting room drinking spirits. Making some noise that I can hear through two pains of glass and the width of the street. It means I won’t sit by the window, ‘cause they may see and think I was staring, but from this side of the room I’ll raise a glass to them.

2003-10-14T20:28:00.000Z

I thought I’uld sit down and write my letter to Zac soon, before I forgot the sense of what I meant to say. Was to set out as a list: “Do you remember when?” and run through some things I think would amuse him. I got my diaries out sorted them through. Distracted again by my life at the time, not that it was so interesting. But people can say things like “I look back and I want to say to the person I was then, such and such thing.” What I would rather do is take some advice from the girl I was some years ago. She was full of fierce fun, had impulses, acted quickly, made things, half-made things, but at least started them, went in a direction.

Late teenage years are quite bad in their way, already a person is done with anything but being and adult, but that doesn’t start yet. In a way you’re in a waiting room, they give you education to pass away the time. But there are new things to try out, some of which hit you, wham! For me, was art, design, all the things could be done on a page, what you could signify with just a few lines. I thought revolutions could be started with two sketching pencils, one hard, one semi-soft. And some things, they’re good, but they get better later. Though they also get serious, intrinsic to life.

I found the thing I wanted to remind *Zac of. It was buried well, didn’t make up many lines. I only found it ‘cause of other things in my life I related it too being written of more in the pages.

I think if it had happened now, between us, it would have been very different. We probably would have gone further, done everything, perhaps ‘cause feeling we had to? But we didn’t know what was expected of us, wrote it as we went along. Today it wouldn’t have felt as light and fun. I mean, it was a blast, I got high on it. Now we’uld be drunk, or drugged, even if only to excuse it. Whichever, not ourselves. And afterwards, something would be between us, uncertain, not comfortable. After we did it, I forgot it for a while, until I had that category talked of more, as something rare and thrilling. That gave it a name and a description, but I’ve still never read of something quite the same.

It wasn’t quite an orgy, there were only four of us, we only went so far. I guess it was expressive of the way we were at the time.

It’s in my diary as maybe six lines, November of that year, not long before I got my gallery job. As I’m discovering in so many diary entries, I wrote what I did, not what I felt. I wrote more lines that day on how I didn’t finish an assignment which was soon due, beating myself for being so badly organised. Still, I’ve got a lot of the memory back – one thing I remember links into another. I write it down, more details arrive, attracted to the core.

*Voss and *Yolanda came over, they were tagging along with *Zac, who even though he was only going to see me, just his girlfriend, at least had somewhere to go. This was the time of boredom I remember so much of. *Zac didn’t mind, I thought *Voss and *Yolanda were okay. I’d just got to know her a bit better, she’d moved into one of my study groups and we paired up on stuff ‘cause we were both not impressed with the others. She was a bit too vague to have any deep conversation with. And *Voss was an oik, I think is the best English term. An oik, but funny, which oiks have to be for people to like them. I knew him better from years before. The only setback with having them around was that I’uld have to wait for them to leave before *Zac and I got to make out. It turned out those two didn’t really have a good place to go either.

We were a normal social group for a while, I guess we just chatted. I remember I showed *Yolanda how to start off a friendship bracelet, even though I couldn’t abide the things. Then must have been some time a lull in the conversation, companionable silence, silence or most likely radio. Either of us two couples must have started doing stuff with each other, most likely me and *Zac, ‘cause we were kind of, home. It’s something we used to do at parties, or in hotel rooms on school trips. Was no big deal that people would be doing stuff in the same room. Can be kind of contagious, not just because it puts you in mind of it, but because it’s rather difficult to concentrate on anything else but doing it yourself with someone. Seems easier to just carry on talking to another person when you’ve had a drinks or something, but straight sober, no. You just got to take your partner by… whatever’s closest.

How did we get from one thing to the next? That’s not on the page nore in my head, maddening. I think we must have broken off what we were doing. I’m pretty sure someone said something about ‘mirroring’, that we were doing the same things at the same time. And I know that one of us was kidding the another about not doing something as well as another in another couple looked as though they were doing it... That got traded around for a bit. Seems the most logical that put the idea on us, but I’m not even sure of that. My dairy doesn’t mention it, but it picks up when we actually swapped and started doing things. I know exactly who did what to whom.

So we did kissing first. Giggles to begin with, but surprising how quick we got over that. With *Voss it was all shy everywhere except our mouths. We just didn’t touch each other in that phase, but he was a good kisser, at least it seemed then. Which was strange, ‘cause to know him you wouldn’t think it. We were on the couch, and *Zac and *Yola were on my bed. We were sneaking glances at each other. Was hoping they would begin to lean into each other, so I could then get closer to *Voss. And this seemed to go on for a really long time as well, perhaps we didn’t quite know what to do next?

We must have stopped, because *Zac then tried to be all practical, he said we should set down how far we didn’t want to go with this. I didn’t like this, ‘cause I thought one of us would set barriers for themselves that they might otherwise have broken in the excitement of it. But *Voss broke it up by saying something like:”*Zac, I admire you, but I have my career to think of, I can’t have your baby. I’m sorry.” Which had us all laughing, ‘cause he said it so straight, though perhaps that we were gigglish was that we had got a little nervy. And I said that I’ve lots of condoms here for if we need them, and only *Yola laughed, kind of shrill.

At that stage I think we actually didn’t know what to do next. But we knew we were going to do something, weren’t going to leave it that. I don’t know how the others felt, but my blood was up, felt kind of hyper. There were so many possibilities, but we each didn’t know all the other’s limits. Perhaps didn’t know our own. In my diary I’ve implicated opposite, but I think I’uld have handled pretty well anything.

Next thing we did was strip poker. *Voss to thank for that idea, and without the poker and each had to take an item of clothes off their swapped over partner. Because outside it was cold weather the numbers of clothes were pretty equal except for me, I had been indoors to begin with! It was pretty funny. Just like with a card game, I lost early. I didn’t even have a bra on, for which they were very kind and let me miss a go. Also I had my ‘Samedi’ knickers on, and what is worse, that they could see I had them with days of the week on, or that it was now the evening of Lundi. I don’t remember what my excuse was, but I’m sure they were fresh, though.

Soooo… when it came to the guys taking their last garments off it was pretty obvious they were both stiff, which was also funny. They had a competition to see which could reduce theirs the faster, but nothing would do it. We tried talking about a truly ugly girl at school, then the woman who supervised the IT centre, and the gross Sciences teacher with the greasy moustache, nothing worked. I was kind of pleased, ‘cause it meant they had those, um, possibilities. Then the two boys tried to get us to prove we weren’t wet, but of course we were. In fact I had been careful of my couch covers, but *Yola had smeared a bit on my quilt, so she was busted too.

*Zac picked up my camera and pretended to take photos. Was the Leica, but with no film, and it made a pretty good click, so we messed around pretending to be porno stars, which I guess is how we got back to fooling around with each other again.

The next bit seems all kind of compressed. There was one part when I felt powerful – when I knew that if I did something with *Voss, *Zac and *Yola would do it too. Some way, they would have to. I was the first to use my hand on *Voss, have it in my mouth, have him go down on me. Strange now that my memory of direct sensations of that are nothing compared to how strong those of seeing *Yola and *Zac do the same. I only felt like I was betraying when *Voss had his fingers in me. *Zac never did that with me, and I knew he wouldn’t with *Yola. I don’t think *Zac could have been offended though.

I think I got two climaxes, which is surprising to me – but sometimes being in a buzz can overwhelm a feeling of strangeness. *Yola told later me she had two or three. *Zac had his in *Yola’s mouth, which I wasn’t lucky enough to see. Was a shame in a way that *Voss didn’t reach his with me, but I think he saved it for when he and *Yola had sex, was nice ‘cause *Zac and I could watch. Watching them, it wasn’t really like porno, only really sweet. Maybe it was just the glow that follows, but it made me feel warm inside to see them.

So sure, we didn’t go all, all, all the way. Perhaps if boys are girls and can go again and over, we might have done more. And I didn’t do things with *Yola, later we agreed we would have done things to be entertaining though. I don’t think the guys would have done the same, but I don’t blame them, they have to be true to their desire, and it was fun all the way.

When I next saw them, it really wasn’t the first thing I thought of. We didn’t propery talk of it again, but not from shame, I’m certain. People we knew of our age would not have been surprised, perhaps less than half might do the same, but that wouldn’t make us special.

Maybe one day again I’ll do something similar. I wouldn’t mind, but I wouldn’t like it to be from boredness or desperation. I’uld like it to be with perhaps a couple like them, relaxed and funny and cute to look at.

This didn’t help me write my letter to *Zac, but was pleasing to look back on the memory.

2003-10-11T20:05:00.000Z

Out today, I saw a couple of things.

I looked up to the top of the new fat tower in the financial district. And I saw it had little workmen clambering all over the top. Ants on the end of a banana.

In another street I looked up again, saw monsters in the roofscape. There are so many of these in London, a person just has to look up…

Last night I spoke to *Zac, for rather a long time. It’s been almost a year since last we spoke? In between times we sent each other little letters, and always postcards from places we’d been. Once sent me a carte derived from cereal box, it was big, covered in his writing and drawings on one side with only a small space left for the address. Big Golden Frosted Flakes of Corn, spattered with milk on the other side. It got through okay.

He doesn’t do by e-mail and I’m all for that. I like it, to send it, receive it… But I’m liking that there are people who don’t communicate by pc, won’t send or receive SMS. These people are Ladies, or they are Gentlemen. Like a man in crushed over ancient brogues will always be more present than one in 150 euro sport shoes. Or a woman whose clothes cost almost nothing from rag shops but is wearing antique silk knickers beneath will in her way amount to more than one with a T-bar showing above the line of D e G skirt.

*Zac has a cell phone, but only for his work. If it wasn’t for *Lucia (I’ll call her that ‘cause she reminds me of the woman who played her on ‘Lucia y el Sexo’) who he lives with, he’uld have almost no technology at all.

It was as if I spent a whole evening with *Zac. To end the call I wanted to hug him goodbye at the door… But I felt the warmth of him just fine. He rang me first, we spoke for an hour, I rang him, another hour, back and forth. Four hours and some went by.

So many of my friends have arrived at a point of stasis. Perhaps not accomplishment, but a good place for them to be right now. I guess it goes in cycles, and a lot of people pause in their middle twenties. I’m pleased for how they fit right in though, riding through it with an easy skill. Relaxed for life, not tensed and paralysed. I should learn from them?

*Zac is now teaching. He says it’s good, he looks forward to each day. I asked, don’t you get tired? But he’s energised by it, wants to be out most evenings, though sleeps like a stone at night. Says he’s a vampire, feeds from his pupils.

Sure I was happy to hear him happy, but also the call was good twice ways. Even though we only spoke a little while on it, he told me about his visit to Pa and Moeder. Funny how he sees them with more frequency than me, but if you knew it, it seems kind of natural. Says he never even knew they’d been apart, to him they seemed the same M. and Mme. Maartens, as they’d ever been. Affectionate and communicating to each other, all that he remembered. And Moeder said to him something that she took a long break away from Pa, to be away from Pa, but that it seemed like the most positive thing.

*Zac alsotold me they were setting about adopting *Lucia. I guess soon enough they won’t be needing their dull daughter in England (I don’t truly mean that!).

I wonder if I’ll do the same one day. Forming relationships like I was a favoured uncle or aunt with the friends and lovers of my children? Hizacking them away some times. I wonder too with a few of those extra nephews and nieces, they will feel more comfortable with me than with me and my husband, if I have one, than with my children themselves. ‘Cause one or two people, who I wasn’t so compatible with, I think they liked some component pieces that comprised me, found them raw and true in each of my parents. But with me they didn’t like the mix so well, weren’t so free and comfortable. I’m not complaining, I guess it’s natural.

While I spoke with *Zac I held his voice between my head and my shoulder, cooked Spanish omelette, fixed J&Ts, did some sketching.

I think he was disappointed I hadn’t done more with myself since I came to London. He was convinced that when I find the place, I’ll find my metier, man of my life, my home. Well, it’s not here, *Zac?! I don’t like to disappoint, but for sure he’s not the only one.

He told me plenty of gossip. At the place he used to work (which I can’t describe, it’s too distinctive) there was a party and some things happened between people, and now there’s all kinds of embarrassments and people even leaving ‘cause they can’t bear to see each other again. Melodrama. Guys, it’s just drugs and sex, get over it…

*Zac then said a thing I didn’t catch up with him at the time, ‘cause there was another subject, but it says something about memory, and what are the meanings of things changing. So, when he and *Lucia first got together they were for a long time intending to find an orgy club or some kind of echangisme, but they never got it together ‘cause it had to be way out of Alpes-Rhone or this side of Suisse. He said it’s not always true that couples move to that when they tire of each other, but instead it’s more likely while there is still a lot of passion. There’s an instinct to explore deeper. But though they’re still into each other, he realised that neither wanted to do that anymore and now perhaps in his life he never might. He didn’t say this as a regret, just thinking of fate.

But I thought, *Zac, you can’t truly say that, ‘cause pretty near and in my description, you already did. But maybe it’s not the same to him, just some teenagers in a bedroom. I guess there were no flashing lights, everything is new then, what’s the difference? I’m going to write him a letter and remind him.

Scared for my phone bill, that last hour I forgot to use my calling card. Suppose I can afford it.

2003-10-05T23:09:00.000Z

A kind of taking of stock now I’ve reached a hundred entries? That’s not going to happen, what’s to see? I don’t remember when three-quarters of a year could be so placid. I’ve had unhappier times, but that’s not the matter.

So. I got on a tube going anywhere today, just chose where to go as I came down the stairs and a train was pulling in. Got off when my fare zone ended. Went walking and I found a bridge, it was actually beside the rail line I just travelled on.

Then I walked on through streets that were almost familiar and found Chelsea Harbour, which is not really any longer a harbour. I liked the big round structures nearby, owned by the power company I think.

It’s kind of homes for rich people, and the billboards are like a joke of what they might like, but I guess they’re real. One of the buildings, a tower with a pyramid roof was interesting, the rest not. It’s like a bourgeois KSNM.

I liked the little sea creatures at the base of this lamp pole. London has a lot of these decorations, but they’re subtle, often painted to be discreet. You have to find them.

A church trapped between big blocks. It looks happy enough, faces the river.

2003-10-03T23:42:00.000Z

London doesn’t have many fountains. Else from the past months, there isn’t much hot weather, and I guess that’s why. There two in Trafalgar Square, and one in Hyde Park that I photographed. Wasn’t until I saw the pictures that I realised the bronze fixtures must be worked by the same sculptor.

Trafalgar Square

Hyde Park

Feels like I’m holding my breath. Surprising how long for that I don’t need to inhale.

MK was right, Life is elsewhere:

Tonight I watched the girl who lives across the street arrive in her appartement, make phone calls, disappear and appear, with a plate of food, in a dressing gown, then I could see even from here with her face made up. In and out of her sitting room, sometimes talking with her cellphone, or with the cordless. Then she’s in clothes to go out in. Not a really pretty frock, but different in that way to her day clothing. All the time making calls.

Then something must have happened, I didn’t realise it at first. She sat down and switched on her television. For maybe an hour? I looked again and saw the room empty. But she returned, she’d taken off her trousers and her face was off, looked pale, pink, kind of blank to compare. She watched more television, ‘til just now I guess she went to bed.

This girl only moved in this week. I wasn’t truly watching her. You have to be polite and see without looking. I got told it’s a Dutch thing, but that’s not quite right. Snapshots are okay, expected. It’s how you get ideas for furnishing and decoration. But videos with your eyes, it’s not good mannered.

My thinking is she’s not English. Here, who is? And she does a lot of cleaning, though she only just moved in, perhaps it’s normal.

Oh, me. No, let’s not talk about me.

2003-09-28T17:54:00.000Z

I sent *Astrid on her way and everything is emptied a bit. Since I regained my own bed I don’t sleep so well. All sorts of dreams.

Like last night: I was on the telephone to my mother and she was saying ‘That’s not the sort of thing I worry about you doing to me.’ Or something like that. But this was so sudden, as if I had just arrived in this phone call, I couldn’t remember the dialogue that had got me to that point. All that I could get to my mind were the words ‘…moon over Constantinople.’ Which I think means we were speaking English? Panicking now, asked Moeder to not worry that I was mad, but that I had only just woken when the conversation started and so could she please tell me what we were talking of to begin with?

When my diary was written it was so full of things, I miss this. Of my time with *Astrid there’s so much I’uld have recorded, not the things we did, but what we spoke about. So much talking, my voice is a little cracked now and my throat aches, it’s kind of pleasurable. We talked across the room and the width of a street in Chelsea and sometimes so close I could taste her breath. Was sweet, but fresh.

She wants to find a man to marry and they will take off across the Sund into Sweden, moving north at no more than fifty kilometers per day. She and he will talk to the people they meet in towns along the route, ask them their dreams for the future while swiftly they make their own. *Astrid will be at the most fertile part in her cycle and they’ll have a lot of sex together without barriers. When they reach the latitude of the Arctic they’ll find a church, a simple place, and the pastor must be twice as old as the elder of she and her fiancé. They’ll marry and make their way back slowly along the coast of Norway and somewhere they’ll ask a stranger to name their child.

*Astrid asks her father to give her his tobacco tins when he finishes the contents. She tells him it’s to contain the materials for her designing, he complains that clothes today are closer fitting, and the tins are too big for his pockets, but he still buys them. *Astrid pretends to him she didn’t once see that he transfers the tobacco to a plastic pouch now. She doesn’t keep anything in them but a scent memory of her father, and she opens the latest tin once in a while now she’s so far from him.

She and her brother left home at the same time and took an appartement together in the city. They get on very well and it was certainly cheaper, but one thing she told no-one of was that also she could continue to wear his shirts. It’s true that *Astrid could have borrowed them, but she liked to wear them fresh from his body, quickly from the laundry pile before they became crumpled and stale. Nothing was ever said about her habit, but I don’t think from shame. It wasn’t quite kinky, if they were too sweaty she wouldn’t wear them. But she liked his aftershave at the neck and just a little smell of him was a benefit.

These things she told me which she’s told no-one else.

I told her a couple of things too. One of which I could never before bear to tell myself.

2003-09-23T23:11:00.000Z

I have to say this, it's on my mind. Was out and about today, being the guide. I noticed there were so many copies of the Metro free newspaper lying around, but even so people were grabbing them off the seats seeming that they were precious. I read one in less than five minutes and I'm quite slow to read things. Why is it so attractive?

But that's not the big thing. I don't understand the Hutton Trial. No-one talks about it at work anymore, which I'm glad of 'cause I was feeling left out and stupid. But now in the paper they found a memo that said Mr Campbell wanted to fuck Mr Gillingham. And I thought they didn't like each other? They make themselves appear as enemies, but really they send these notes making such suggestions. I wonder if this is an English peculiarness? For sure, it's not made me any less confused.

2003-09-23T22:42:00.000Z

I like this little room now I’m used to it. It’s the utility room, I didn’t think it could fit a mattress, but it does. So small, there’s only room for that, this is what I like: a person could only take in a book or a radio, there is nothing to distract from the business of sleeping.

Some noises from above, but that’s not a problem, I like to hear the couple upstairs talking. Reminds me of when I was younger and could hear my parents, muffled, no words to concentrate on, just voices. Sometimes I’uld sense a change in tone, that would be Moeder reading from something aloud, she read to him as she did to me. When I moved to the flat above I missed it and sometimes would lie flat with my ear to the floor, but it wasn’t the same, not at all.

Actually *Astrid’s on the telephone just now and I think it’s to her man, sounds like she’s talking romantic or maybe just dirty. Guess I better borrow some of those antiseptic wipes from my workplace tomorrow.

This bed is just slightly not comfortable, or maybe I’m just not acquainted with it. I sleep, but I’m awake maybe five times in the night. And I dream like a mad person. Though this morning was the most frustrating thing, was wearing this pair of, oh, gorgeous, almost to knee high suede boots. Interesting what you can feel in a dream and I felt so damn good in those boots, walking cross a bridge in Geneve, wanting more than anything to meet a person I knew, most especially a boy. So in the dream I must have been younger, ‘cause it’s not so much the emotion I have as an adult. I’m this teen sex god, whatever, and I think much everything else I’m wearing is good, too. It’s dusk time, I’m on my way to Cornavin to meet someone, with this feeling that something good is coming to me…

Then I wake, and my left-side ribs hurt from Andre Gide being trapped underneath me. Poor soul, I creased his cover pretty bad.

2003-09-21T18:34:00.000Z

So now *Astrid is out and doing her own thing and I get time to type. I only just reached the end of catching up on my e-mail.

We went for along walk yesterday. *Astrid insisted to see the man in the box, but I wasn’t keen. I should feel guilty, ‘cause I planned it that we didn’t. We walked along the river, almost all the way from Westminster. I lent *Astrid my camera when she needed it, the card on hers was full – these are hers, I hope she doesn’t mind.

And these are mine.

They've got some kind of Egyptian theme along the Embankment. They also have 'Cleopatra's Needle', which is not impressive.

So my plot was to get her very tired before we got there. She doesn’t have stout legs – they were made for Wolfords and Blahniks, not jeans and Caterpillars. By the time we got to Blackfriars Bridge she was already pressing the arret demande button. When we got to London Bridge she was defeated. And also hungry. But I shouldn’t feel too bad, ‘cause I think she’s gone there today.

And we were up ‘til three last night talking, we had a lot to update with. But she was tired, I can see why. Anti-climactic, she has just spent some time, nearly a month, with a guy she at first hardly knew, touring around the British Isles. Or rather, finding a lot of different locations to have sex in, was how she said it. They were always being evicted from hotel rooms by cleaners, which was good or I guess they’uld have seen almost nothing of all the places they visited. Sounds like intense, I’m a little envious. Though from the little pictures she scrolled through in the screen of her camera, he doesn’t look so hot to me, but, yuh, people are different, people are strange.

In truth, just now, I might consider some compromise, I admit.

*Astrid is pushing hard that I should go back to college. She says my brain will turn to crap, and that if that’s going to happen I might as well have a baby and do something productive. I told her what I tell everyone, that if I had a baby I’uld just let it make a mess in its pants up ‘til it can take care of itself and forget to feed it and forth. But the college suggestion I don’t have a good retort for. I only dropped out ‘cause I fell out with myself, then pretended it was with other people, no reason why I shouldn’t go back.

Or she says I should get a career, but that’s not for me either, right now. I’ve seen how some people behave when they get a focus to their work, it van be worse than parenthood!

But *Astrid knows what she’s doing and I’m pleased. She now works for a big international charity, who will soon send her out on trips to the other European offices and also to Africa and suchlike. It doesn’t pay so well, but she’s in a similar position to me – will earn her way in life, but sure there’s money in the background just in case. She’s still living with her ex-boyfriend. You have to see it to realise how not weird that is.

I think now most of Western society is very free. Most times, we can form the relationships we like, and we can each find what is right. *Astrid will never have sex and romance in the home, for instance. And the man she lives with is celibate and is happy. *Inka is married but without the papers. *Benny would never go out with a man who uses moisturiser.

We all have the opportunity to be who we want to be, with whoever we choose. If we don’t get that way, it’s ‘cause we’re keeping ourselves from it. I once read an interview with a successful author. People would say to him, at parties: “You’re a writer. I wish I could write.” And he says to them: “Well, why don’t you?” He can say that and he won’t have people sending him their work all the time for him to tell them what is his opinion. ‘Cause he knows they will make an excuse and not write at all.

Which is just the thing I say to myself for motivation. But fuck does it not work…

2003-09-18T21:52:00.000Z

I went away
To see an old friend of mine
His sister came over
She was out of her mind

She said Jesus had a twin
Who knew nothing about sin
She was laughing like crazy
At the trouble I’m in

Her light eyes were dancing
She is insane
Her brother says she’s just a bitch
With a golden chain

She keeps coming closer saying
“I can feel it in my bones”
This schizophrenia
Is taking me home

My future is static
In fact it’s already had it

I could tuck you in
And we could talk about it

I had a dream
And it split the scene

But I got a hunch
It’s coming back to me
Gordon, Moore, Ranaldo, Shelley

I’ve been busy. Out a lot.

2003-09-15T21:49:00.000Z

Okay, so here's Ernst. Behind him, ladies on a Berlin street.

2003-09-15T20:15:00.000Z

What is the point of this anyway? I'm not learning anything, just finding more excuse to go nowhere. The english phrase is navel-gazing. I'm thinking this about the words, but it's the pictures that made me doubt. They all disappeared, the ones with numbers and so forth. The big ones I mean, I still have the little ones, as you can see. And also those from Kopenhagen, but they most probably get deleted soon anyway.

I hate the way nothing works on the internet, at least not for long.

In real life, *Astrid arrives tomorrow, she's been in Ireland for a while. I'm looking ahead to that. Plus today I went to the exhibition of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's paintings, which was quite something, I wish I could recommend them, but they go at the end of the week. I wanted the catologue, but I'm on rations, so I bought some postcards instead and a little Taschen book. The nudes are so sad and true, and then you see some photographs he took, and they are the same in life. The rooms were full of sharp old ladies who are exhibition experts and know just how to get to the pictures when it's crowded. Maybe I'uld become like that, too.

So I would scan a picture as example, but...

2003-09-09T20:54:00.000Z

So losing the place to sleep was difficult and I guess what I did next was quite true to the principle I had at the time. Wasn’t going to be a burden on anyone, not even my own bank deposits. I could so easily have tapped into savings, but I didn’t.

*Frederik wasn’t in among the list of options I went through. I sat down in the Orestedsparken, once I’d found a place for everything but an essential bag, and wrote out a list. In crisis I get methodical. He wasn’t on it, and I didn’t think of him, but he must have been in my mind somewhere. Straight away, I telephoned him, perhaps he took a long break at work, he picked me up in his car and took me to his flat, stopping at the station to get my other bag. At his appartement, he took my things straight into the bedroom. I kind of knew he was going to do that, I already expected.

Anyways, next morning.

How strange this, each sensation is different. The chair I’m sitting upon, wind through the window on my arm getting cold, as if I’m very aware of all things at once. I’m a little wired, I don’t know why. Rather like I just did something new and everything and nothing is the same.

It’s the strangest thing to lie with a man I don’t enjoy. Not a disappointment, I knew it couldn’t be good. Not unpleasant, nothing horrible at all. Just. Nothing. Where always before was something, a little swell in my ribs at the least. With this, friction, no tingle. If such an absence, why this profound mood now?

Buh, get used to it, five more nights and five more mornings drinking his coffee from a bowl. Who would think he’uld serve it the French way? If it’s repeatedly like this, I think it could be okay.

During the day I’ll do real things, then the nights won’t matter. It’s not a problem.

NEXT DAY

Always I leave the ultimate things until the last, and today I went with *Astrid to the lovely multi- pastel- coloured cinema nearby to Vesterport. It’s not quite such a sweet cake inside. We saw ‘Bridget Jones's Dagbog’. It was sometimes funny, but quite often I found it weird which has to do with my state of mind in this moment. Especially ‘cause I didn’t really like either of the actors.

I told her I was staying with this guy and she doesn’t know him – thought maybe she was sorry that I hadn’t told her, ‘cause with men we always do. But I can’t tell her that with him not really… It’s way too complicated for me! I’m confused myself.

Scaring how well this all works in other ways. The bed is comfortable, he doesn’t snore, keeps to his side, his quilt is just right. He has no problem that I like to read a bit before sleep. He cooked for me again, was good, I think I should cook tonight, but I’m nervous in another person’s kitchen. There is a bath, deep, I guess the hot tank is quite large.

*Frederik’s not a talker, this I knew, but that’s good, ‘cause I don’t want to know too much of his personality. He watched television last evening, while I did e-mail and such on his computer. Weren’t in the way of each other.

I wonder what he thinks though. I’ve heard it said that men can be blind, but I think if that’s true it could be just that they appear so better than women. He must know. In fact, now I think he doesn’t even really have passion for me, but, I’m a girl… Why does he have no woman of his own? In theory, he looks okay, better than average perhaps.

Mechanically is the least of it. It doesn’t seem a problem that I don’t do anything. The first night I had plenty of moisture, which was weird, maybe just the excitement of doing something different? Similar to adrenalin? Last night I told him I was dry ‘cause of my cycle, so that’s only half a lie. Was worried that he used Vaseline, it’s not meant to be used with condoms, but it didn’t burst, and he was quite quick. I bought a different kind for him to use today. It’s not as awkward as going to my doctor (but she is weird), less uncomfortable, too. He is very traditional, what is down below stays down below. No effort for me, that’s for sure.

Frightening that it’s so easy. I couldn’t do this forever, I hope, but I can see.

Now I know how it’s done. When people in cultures marry first and make a relationship later. I won’t be around so long as that!

NEXT DAY

*Frederik had to go early this morning, but I was also awake and got a ride into town. At that time was quiet in places and I went to Langelinie to take pictures of Den Lille Havfrue while there was no-one else there. Funny that when she isn’t surrounded by people she appears less lonely, more calm and placid. There was only one other person, I think Polish, who asked for me take his picture with her and I was worried he would fall among the rocks. Later I thought about the people in Poland who would look at the photo that I took.

[Long, long paragraph about a book I was reading then, Gabriel Garcia Marquez]

Last night *Frederik rented a video and we watched that while we ate the dinner I cooked. He thanked me and said it was nice. I made a kind of paella. The movie was 'A Life Less Ordinary'. Good, it has Ewan McGregor.

We used my K-Y, which was good, ‘cause he took a bit longer this time. Perhaps that he wanted it as a different position. Doggy, was okay, he didn’t push too hard. He’s kind of competent and functional, or perhaps that’s just how it seems to me without the feelings.

Good news is, in the afternoon I masturbated and got off, twice in twenty minutes. I’m all in full working order for when I need it. I’m for sure going to treat myself to some kind of man when I get back to Utrecht.

He won’t be back ‘til 22:00, I’m having noodles by myself. This is a nice place, if we were married it would be good as divorce settlement. Ach, must stop thinking such things!

2003-09-06T20:27:00.000Z

I'm all kinds of not pleased. PNavy don't allow remote linking to my pictures anymore. I'm not going to complain, 'cause it was free anyway.

I don't know what to do. There's too damn much to recode every link. I'm just writing this here 'cause on top of this nuisance I don't want other people to be nuisanced. Or feel they should tell me about it. This is a link to the whole thing, feel free to just go through it, there's no pictures of me or anything personal there.

I should just stop this right now. But I wrote this earlier, so it should go on, I guess.

There are two things that made me think of this from my Denmark time of diary. But if you look around, it’s everywhere, under all kinds of description.

The first thing to remind me of it was what happened between *Rolf and *Gunilla in the house in Charlo. And it was so simple, it seemed at the time and even now to be a thing mundane and ordinary. There was a rota for the general ménage, hovering and such, and what they did now seems part of that rota. I always wondered, I thought she paid him to do her turn. Was strange, she didn’t have so much money. Soon before I left I asked her directly, but just really in fun. Was close to regretting that I did. She said, “No, I couldn’t afford that, so I offered to go to bed with him.” I never once heard *Gunilla tell any kind of joke, that wasn’t one either.

*Rolf was for most things quite useless, but he could clean and tidy properly, he only couldn’t wake up in the morning or keep a job. Often one of us would have to loan him money ‘cause his social security was late. But always you knew when *Rolf cleaned the house. On his own turn and *Gunilla’s, the entire building was made immaculate. If only cleaners were paid better, he would have been a master and always in work. Where I would sweep, he would wash, if I ‘uld wipe, he ‘uld scrub. *Gunilla’s room was a sty. If you ever saw the Tracey Emin bed, that was nothing, believe me.

She told me they did five times so far, that it only took fifteen minutes, *Rolf was, she said it something like: ‘polite’. *Gunilla didn’t have a boyfriend, I don’t think men, or women, were ever on her mind. *Rolf’s girl was away studying in Aarhus, and I don’t think they met as much as he liked. I’m supposing for *Gunilla it was honestly worth it.

But I don’t think *Rolf would have paid a prostitute, I don’t think *Gunilla would have done that for money – she was very poor sometimes, when her café job was cut back. And they didn’t behave strangely around each other. Not close, not distanced. I don’t think it was damaging.

The other was my thing, with, I’ll call him Frederik, ‘cause he lived in Frederiksberg, which is a separate city commune entirely surrounded by Kopenhagen. It wasn’t really a thing even, just what was convenient then.

That picks up in the next bit of my diary.

2003-09-03T22:16:00.000Z

So more from my diary, yuh? It's a couple of days on from the last one. My home got busted, or nearly.

That was a scary night, even just remembering it gets my heart to beat faster, unpleasant. Means I’ll have to move, shame, I thought I could get through it. But *Voss told me that the place might still be habited, really he tried to talk me out of it. I feel so stupid when I try things that fail.

Woke up at near to 0400, hearing noises downstairs, no mistaking they were real and in the building, not just wind rattling the blinds. I looked outside, couldn’t see a thing until the lights in the floor below switched on, illuminated the Falck van in the compound. So I went quick to the door to my room (or office!) and closed it, then brought all my things to be behind the desk and the cupboards. Out of sight from the corridor window. When you turn the lights on at the switch, the bulbs only flare when you move in their vicinity. So I had to be very still, ‘cause once the power is on for the floor it would be obvious if only my room lit up. I saw the light on the other side of the glass getting brighter each moment as the guard set off the bulbs.

He was in a hurry though, which to begin was worrying, I thought he knew to come straight for me. But then he was on past, and around the floor back to the stairs. It took the longest time, I thought, for him to tour the floors above. Finally the lights went off all in one, as he went down the stairs. I could breathe. Saw his little car move off out of the gates. Didn’t sleep again until maybe 0600, then for just an hour.

Packed up and got out. My stuff is mainly in two lockers at Hovedbanegarden, some other stuff in the cupboard space in *Astrid’s basement. Most likely no-one will look there. I didn’t ring her bell, I don’t want her to know.

Now I’ve got to think – hoped in the time of writing this I’uld decide, but seems not. Some options. Right now I’m thinking cheap hotel and shit on my pride. Backache and neckache and all else my strange bed gave me these last nights is in its favour.

2003-09-01T19:35:00.000Z

Here are some pictures from around about the area I was ‘living’ just then.

This is just the cutest street. All the way along the tarmac is painted with murals. It think all streets should be like this.

I lived close to the main mail depot and a goods yard. There are big signs on it, in their language ‘DSB Gods’. I imagined Nordic angry spirits trapped inside the diesel engines, pulling containers when they’uld rather be making thunder. That’s how the Danes would make Thomas the Tank Engine.

When I was there the Oresund link hadn’t long been opened. To promote and get the Danish people to visit the other side they invented a character called ‘Harry’, who was like a muppet from Sesame Street. On on TV advertissement you saw him with a Dansk/Svenska dictionary on the train, trying to chat up a female muppet who was meant to be Swedish. I don’t know if the Swedes had TV ads, I guess it’s enough for them to know now they can get to the liquor store without getting seasick. I think Harry was also to encourage people to use the DSB all over the country and not make traffic jams.

I like this post office sign.

We had a conversation on this in the office. I think in Sweden they’re soon to vote on whether to have the Euro. They’re sceptical the same in Denmark. In the UK the right wing is against it. In Scandinavia, the left. I don’t understand how, it was explained to me but fell out of my brain, I must have tilted my head to one side or something. Anyhoo, that’s why this wallpainting is showing everything the rightwing people hate. But is still contra to the EU

A Nederlander can always feel a little bit at home. I wonder who has the biggest cyclepark?

Another wall mural, a cosy little junk yard below.

And another, Vesterbrogade is a humdrum street in that place, so needs a happy trompe l’oeil.

2003-08-29T17:09:00.000Z

I read my diary back from two years ago. Almost to the day. Was a pretty strange time. This guy I didn’t know well told me of an office he used to work in that was empty. I’d run out of rental at Charlo and didn’t want the others to pay for me until my flight was due to go. There were all kinds of other ways, better ways, but just then it made sense.

I don’t have to sleep in the park, but it’s an unsettling arrangement. Can’t ever be really comfortable here. But it’s only for less than two weeks.

In reality I’ve got options. This. Or I could stay in the Radisson for the time, if I choose. Or book a sooner plane. Just use a different card at the ATM, it’s not difficult. A recent time, I nearly did it by accident. Is it the principle or is it just deliberate craziness? However, it’s my craziness, and I pay for it, not *Astrid hosting me, not my parents by paying my plane ticket or for a hotel room. I’ve been saying this to myself for so long, I’ve got to build from a basics of self-reliance.

It’s difficult to know what they did in this office before. Most of the cabinets and shelves are empty or locked. Not many of the left behind documents are in any language I understand. Perhaps was insurance?

Fully pleased with myself that I had the idea to pull up some carpet underneath padding, in layers this makes a good bed base. Could all be a worse place to camp in. Would go out on the roof, but it’s rather overlooked by other buildings, so would be obvious. But I can open the door discreetly and watch the evening sunlight on the buildings in the city, those towers, spires. Last night I felt good, today, giddy but that might be that I didn’t get breakfast so far. Not a bad feeling. I found some coffee in a kitchenette and made some cold. Damn, the grains of it don’t melt in the cold water! One has to mash them up in a little water at the bottom of the cup, then fill it up. Eww, tastes yuck, and maybe I’uld have been better without.

I might go to Frederiksberg Park, was good there with *Otto, I’ll see the squirrels perhaps. And there might be something cheap in Fotex for my lunch. Have to get out of here now though. Sound of cars parking, and the people at the other buildings make me antsy for sure.

[later]

This neighbourhood’s pretty sketchy. I guess it’s always at the back of a main station. I feel freer here once the other offices are closed, and I can go in and out without worrying so much, so I went for a walk and to get some drinking water. Taps on the upper floors here are dry and each toilet has only what’s left in the tank, so I can flush each only once. Eleven toilets, thirteen days, it doesn’t quite add up.

Bumped into *Otto at the station, how often it goes that you think of someone and they appear. He was coming from his Hamburg train. Told him I went to Frederiksberg Gardens, and he remembered he owes me a lunch. I asked him to take me to a Jensen’s, cause I’m soon to leave and still didn’t go yet. Said I looked to need feeding, okay.

I looked at myself in the light of my torch in the toilet mirror, I seemed to have pouches to my eyes whichever way I shone it. Should go in the Damer tomorrow, ‘cause their mirrors are more forgiving.

2003-08-26T21:20:00.000Z

I wrote I’uld put some pictures here from my time in K. Here’s some that have relevance to Amager, which is a place analogous maybe to South London here, or maybe Brooklyn, NYC. Only kind of placid mostly.

The figure here needs explaining. It’s an Amager girl selling produce from a basket, ‘cause once they were known as market traders, and a lot of the vegetables and fruits in Kopenhagen were grown on Amager. You’ll also see the Amager girl on a fleet of taxis and in a painting in the Statens Museum, where she is crashing a party of cute square young artists. There’s a market place (no market now though) named for it in the town.

The true test of a city’s vitality is not its commerce but its art.
It’s not fucking rocket science, but it sometimes takes Albert Einstein to make the point. Just a poster I saw.

There’s a lot of public housing out there. It’s not like in Brondby, some of which is just ergh. They care to put a little ornamentation

Nearer to the water looks like blocks that could be harsh, but get to know them and you understand they’re full of warmth. Islands Brygge is also way popular with young couples.

Going further down the island, you see a lot of vegetable plots (haveforening), also what are like homes, like chalets. Our landlord lived in one.

Down further yet is Orestad, which didn’t quite exist then, I don’t think yet does. I went there with *Maet and *Siegfried. We girls were tripping, you had to be, or you had to be *Siegfried. Behind this pic, a doorway, to a cellar, with no building.

2003-08-20T22:14:00.000Z

So the other day it took myself to the cinema, ‘cause I didn’t want to just rattle on home after work and so forth… anyways, I saw this film:

And do you know, I don’t can’t remember when I felt so much in sympathy with a person in a film. The lady in it was strong, but troubled and even with a family somehow alone in her unhappiness. Everytime she tried to break out and be true to herself she was constricted by those around her.

Was filmed in a beautiful place, I think an island, but also hellish.

The last moments show legs swimming in the sunlighted water. I saw it in my head sometimes before I reached home that night.

2003-08-17T22:47:00.000Z

*Astrid was here for the weekend. She’ll be away for a while, travelling in England, then back again before she goes back. Was good these two days, catching up with each other.

She was in the mood for parks and gardens. Yesterday we went to the Botanical Gardens of Kew. Pleasant that it wasn’t too hot. London has few water fountains, so this was a nice surprise:

Are you scared of insects? Don’t click here then! But we didn’t see any real ones, pity.

And we encountered an English gentlemen. He reminds me of my landlord. He came up close to us and then went away again. I don’t think he approved of us!

We both agreed that this mural is quite out of place in somewhere so busy and brash as Soho:

In Hyde Park we saw this new pavilion, which is moving soon, it’s not permanent. A shame, it’s perfect, I think, the right place for an elegant café.

2003-08-15T21:13:00.000Z

*Astrid soon arriving has made me think back a lot. I don’t think I made the best of my time in Kopenhagen. Was one of those false beginnings, where I went to a place decisively, but almost at random. Perhaps that could make sense, but written here I’m not convinced either. Most interesting perhaps was the place I lived, for most of the time, which told me plenty about myself, as well as learning about others.

A big house in a bourgeois kind of suburb of the city, in fact it was across a border, in another commune, Gentofte. The landlord was a strange guy, he lived in a little house on the other side of the town. I delivered the rent money to him once, it was like one of those gardening plots but almost a proper wooden house. He gave me mint tea and we talked about art, he had so many books on the subject. Told me he learned to read German because much of the books are in that language. He couldn’t speak it but he could translate from writing.

If one walked to the end of our street you came to a beach. I used to go and sit there when I wanted to be on my own. Some others in the house did the same. One evening I remember, we were three, spaced out on the sand, each alone from the others. I liked to watch the ships travel by small ones I guess to Helsingborg, big ones to Norway, and cruise liners, and ships of cargo, big brutes, ugly, I liked them too. Before I always lived in land and the best was to see a ship at night, with calm water for its lights to reflect on. I always remember the good things, ‘cause I think they go deepest.

Before the Charlottenlund house I was shortly staying in Amager, it’s like an island, though I guess Sjaelland is too. And to cross to Amager is like in any ordinary town, crossing a river (East River, Thames, Seine). The situation there didn’t work out, a shame. She was quick to get rid of me, and found that other house for me. We were better friends later.

I wonder if any one person who was living there two years ago is still present? There was always renewal, even in my few months. A person could have too much of it. I get reminded to it by this ‘Big Brother’, but really to see the television programme it’s so false and what was difficult about Charlo was in reality. People were human, very human, too human. It was sometimes intense.

The house had a history, that it had once been a colony for hippies. In the attic was an archive, picture albums and documents, like you might keep for a family. There were photos of parties in the kitchen, digging for vegetables op the garden, playing games on the beach. In one era, people are having a kind of ceremony, each person at a different time. Was it a welcoming ritual? Rooms can be recognised, but have other uses. My first room there once held a typewriter, and a big duplicating machine. My second was once an artist studio. Once we carried the tradition by painting each other, first on cardboard for canvas, then we later we just painted… yuh, each other! Wish I had some pictures of it. But the mood we were in, even the camera would get painted! I took plenty of photos in other times, but gave almost all to the archives.

The majority of residents at Charlo were grad students, at least of the people who provided stability. Sometimes I think I’d like to fake a qualification, to go directly to that phase, ‘cause I don’t think I could fit quite in with the younger students. There’s excitement and energy I couldn’t share. With the graduates it’s rather different, less buzz and crackle to them, but I think I could relate more closely.

For all the time I was in Kopenhagen I didn’t do any work. You have to learn just a basic piece of the language wherever you are. And I somehow didn’t make the effort. Perhaps if I had gone to Odense as with my previous plan, I would have done. I think I cut myself off from a lot I could have achieved in that way. But I ‘uld know by instinct if I was intended to set down roots there.

Lived off savings, set myself a limit, and when that was all gone, time to go back to Utrecht and try again from there. It worked out that way. Things got difficult towards the end, had to leave Charlo earlier than I expected, was homeless for a couple of weeks.

I guess it was a good experience in total, but I’uld do things different if I was there and then again.

2003-08-12T18:48:00.000Z

This is the last of my people pictures for a while. I didn’t take many, they’re not really my thing. This pair look like characters in a film of Eric Rohmer, if you know him. Look like they talk plenty, in the sunshine, and perhaps don’t ever get to something physical.

For a short time I was seeing a guy who made a theory, that Rohmer was impotent, and that many of the scenarios in his films were to show the possible interactions of an impotent man. Well, he should know – this guy, not Rohmer, about the director I couldn’t say.

Thinking ahead to *Astrid’s visit soon brought back some memories of when I was in Kopenhagen, so if you’ll excuse me I’ll do what I was meant in this space and winch out some cattle. Soon.

2003-08-07T21:27:00.000Z

Am I being too sensitive? I think it’s really badly mannered to just send to a person a SMS, with everything really abbreviated, when that person has previously left one phone message and one e-mail to reply to. Was it too much effort even to press some more keys? ‘Cause I don’t even understand two of his ‘words’. I’m not answering, not to that.

There should be new books of etiquette written for the modern time. After all, the English were foremost in this? More new rules should apply to cell phones, they’re rudeness in themselves.

Plus I don’t think there’s anything in the code penal here concerning ‘flip-flops’. I searched today for it here, and the enforcing documents are missing. Surely that shuffling Thertap! Thertap! is in contravention of a law?

Oh, I’m all kinds of tetchy today. Don’t even ask me how I became like this.

Another from the singular series. Feels to me like it’s underwater, in an aquarium.

2003-08-06T20:51:00.000Z

*Astrid comes to stay next week. She is one of those people who smiles often, not for others but for herself, and you might wonder what is the stimulation for it. But the first time I saw her smile in that way I instantly understood that I would frequently see that type of smile, I knew not to ask her why.

*Asrtid is like a cat, she’s fascinating to me, I could watch her for hours, even when she sleeps.

So many things I should have done before now. Nothing is prepared, and it won’t be tomorrow, I feel a little bad. But I’m looking to seeing her with anticipation. I feel that I want some kind of breath of the North.

I liked about her that she wasn’t from the house. Also this meant that when I was with her she was usually not with other people and I didn’t have to be tense about conversations being made in English in consideration only of me. Sometimes she practiced her French with me, which was okay.

She was some one to whom I could confide, could trust, when I was surrounded by people who were just too damn close. I think since then I’ve neglected her. Some people I neglect, some people I’m neglected by. I hope they have different roles with others, too.

So hot here now, I’m resenting the warm air that emerges from my lappie’s little fan-vent. Stop, it’s enough! I want to get inside the fridge. Took a cold shower earlier, but a person just warms up again.

I once worked in a kind-of job, giving out flyers to people passing by. It’s depressing when you see the paper on the ground. I always take leaflets, in sympathy, if I think it’s only a job to them. Christians and so forth I avoid, ‘cause they often try to talk to me.

No-one appears so solitary as a person handing out in a street.

2003-08-02T23:35:00.000Z

It’s not just from here that I was away along time.

In June I looked after *Inka’s place. This was also to look after their cat. Who is not in truth theirs, but has a laissez passer to their residence, via an unusual entrance along tops of roofs. Also they feed it and give it love.

I like the concept of cats more that the cats as real things. With them I’m awkward, they make me transparent. Unless they’re a bit shtoopid, and HC is not. Not at all. When I first met with him he sized me and was disappointed in the space of one second.

It was a good time, I was still working, doing some of *Inka’s job also. Then going home to her home. All of my possessions were still in South-West Seven. My head was clear, I wasn’t distracted.

It’s a funny thing to be in another person’s home. I’m less free than if that person was there, but not discomforted. So for instance I always got dressed to leave the room I slept in. Perhaps in a consideration of HC.

Sometime before that fortnight I was very unhappy, but not for any reason. I think it was getting sick and not getting better in my head.

I found ring in the street, I could tell it was an important thing, nearby to my workplace. I got a nice thanking note from the owner, forwarded from the police office. Something went right after going wrong, I like the balance.

In Notting Hill Gate I received a bad hair cut. It was done again in Fulham and is now a lot shorter than it’s ever been before.

The biography of Oscar Wilde is rather long, I read it in English.

A fat man in Hyde Park invited me on a boat holiday. I didn’t meet him before. Since, I have tried computing the probableness of my accepting, according to altered contingency. Changes to his width, attractiveness, my shyness, needing to go to work, different moods, how well I like to sail for a long time. There are so many times on which life can make a sudden turn, but most of them are just when I cross a busy road.

With or nor regard to this, I’ve been spending a lot of my time in the parks. Londoners should realise how lucky they are.

She isn’t me, but in symbol could be, any of these summer days:

2003-07-29T17:33:00.000Z

I took myself to some exhibition places, looking at the way that other people take photographs. With me I can take pictures of people who are my friends, or pictures of places, but no other people, it’s strange. But sometimes when I’ve taken a photo I see that people were there, it’s strange. As if I discover them.

So I’ve been looking through my photos, at the people I trapped all by accident. I think I’ll put some here, there, I’ve said it, now I’ll do it.

But for now, handbags and shoes. A shop nearby to Oxford Street.

I know we’re meant to believe, and to say when it happens, that people are nasty to be defencive, or to hide a sadness, but I don’t believe that’s true for most times. I think they can be nasty because they are already in a place from which they can be that way. Think about it, how can you be nasty if you don’t have the power to be? It’s about power.

Sometimes, I don’t feel good to say this, I think if I had that kind of power and, in truth, confidence, I’uld do the same. But instead when I get mad words spill out and they’re just the same as tears and I’m weaker than before. Should be grateful, I guess.

Oh, and another thing. The meek don’t get anything, not even right at the end. There’s only now. It stinks, but working around it people still can be happy.

*Inka and me are looking for another job. It’s either that or buy a gun.

2003-07-26T22:05:00.000Z

I met with *Benny today, and had a good time. What he was doing today was what he does especially every year at about this time, which is a thing he calls (I have to be careful to make capitals): ‘Not Going To Gay Pride’. He says to me that in fifteen from the last twenty years that he has been in England he has Not Gone on fourteen occasions, and he is very proud of this. And told me that more than my wittiness and loyalty and character the thing he most admires in me as a woman is that I have never asked him to take me. As he says, a woman should be escorted by a woman, and I agree.

We hung out at my place and I did some cooking, then we opened a bottle and played cards, he doesn’t always beat me and there is something to the rhythm of a conversation when two people play a card game that it seemed we both really like.

I liked having some company around, I’ve seen only my co-workers in recent times. Unhealthy, though I like some of them.

Moeder is coming to visit London next week. She is bringing her friend, so she’ll stay at a hotel, I’ll suggest her one nearby, there are so many. Perhaps we can get some straight talking instead of all this evasion. By telephone, I’ve given up, but she owes me understanding.

I walked with *Benny earlier, between the rain clouds. We were a long way from Hyde Park, but this poor ballon had travelled along way than ran out of puff. It rained more as I watched it moving across the surface of a car’s window as if to get inside, then it was gradually weighted down… Sad thing, which was once so full of pride…

2003-07-25T21:47:00.000Z

Heee, I must show *Inka!

In Marylebone, another part of London I cannot pronounce...

2003-07-20T23:05:00.000Z

It was strange, in Geneve, to feel a sense of foreboding and see reflections as I was walking. So many angry inscriptions on the walls, some shop windows still splintered in their frames.

From upper floors in places there were sometimes flags like that here in Britain would be indicant of gay bars, asking for peace. I don’t know whether for the protestors or the American army. I didn’t understand, but I think that’s because I wasn’t there.

To protect myself I become almost as two people. One takes care to the other. Takes her to the movies, cooks for her nice meals, or maybe just enough to feed her. I don’t meant to say I truly cook for myself (more than customary!), but there is something in self-awareness. Or perhaps it’s that an emergency procedure has taken over, and all is well as I submit to it.

It’s a little soft light in the corner of my room that prevents me from night fright.

To either side of visiting to Geneve my days in Lyon were okay. So-so.

Sometimes with sex it’s not exciting, it’s not uncomfortable. It’s not even interesting. I thought, I can do this for about half of an hour, per day, like waiting in a room or a ticket queue. Only one of those tasks, not as tiring as making a place tidy, but same ways necessary. I’m relaxed so I don’t mind. It couldn’t have been exciting for either of us, but I guess for guys it’s still an important thing. We were both conscious of it. But it was no problem really. Something temporary. So it’s okay.

The rest was better. I only before went to Lyon once, if you can believe it. ‘Cause it’s truly the only useful city nearby to Geneve. But times came that I was either sick, or had some other appointment, when my parents went there. Pa went more often in his work and such, always returning with provisions. So it was a place to explore. I like it’s shape, elegant, slender woman twisting in a dance. I’ll put some pictures on here one day.

For the time, was what I saw yesterday on the facade of the Natural History Museum, which is close by where I live. I'm liking the expression, it's kind of 'What?'

2003-07-16T18:22:00.000Z

I think I’m upset that they didn’t tell me. I had to find out by making a visit of surprise, and Pa didn’t behave as guilty, but he was apologetic and that says to me that he did wrong.

My parents are living in separate towns, some clear countries between them. This never happened before. Pa said “*Sophie, this isn’t a crisis, it’s what people sometimes do. We still love each other.”

There’s a thing I like, that is to hug both of my parents in my one pair of arms. I don’t know if ever I’ll get to do that again.

Why didn’t either of them say something? I’m a good daughter, I phone to them regularly, they had opportunities to tell me that there was to be a change.

Perhaps they’re punishing me that I didn’t tell them when I moved to London. And why. When I spoke with Moeder there was a hint that, “You don’t tell us so much of yourself.”

But when things change to me it makes no difference to them, ‘cause I’m still just the same *Sophie that they always knew. Change for them and for me it’s as when planets all move and nothing is upside right.

2003-07-14T19:21:00.000Z

I can’t remember a time when things ever felt as confused and broken as they do now. I know I have my down times, but truly I take so much for granted and while I wasn’t watching or listening, things went some kind of wrong.

Only I wish I could have been there to help in a way, be a support. I never knew my parents could be so fragile and vulnerable.

Today I think I never really knew my parents. That’s a tough thing to face, even as I know it to be exaggerated.

Yuh, so I’m back again. Didn’t even mean to be, but I guess it’s all this and something I saw yesterday.

Do you remember the grey couple of plaster statues I displayed a photo of back in January (doesn’t seem so long ago)? And I wrote: “Worst would be if only one was purchased and the other left behind.”

It happened, and I saw and for the first time since all the things recently I cried. I know, stupid girl crying at things like that, but it was just a trigger of loss for me and I wasn’t bound so tight that it didn’t get through.

And I wasn’t so cut up that I didn’t get myself a coffee on Baker Street, to bring myself back together and then went back to get a photograph so you could see too.

And it was a photo for my scrapbook and this is it, I can’t just leave it.

2003-05-27T00:26:00.000Z

Her name is Oksanna and she was the only light in that dark film I saw recently.

e-mail? sure, you’re very welcome.

2003-05-19T20:35:00.000Z

When my passport or identity card next expires, I want this man to take my photograph for it.

Terry Richardson is the one on the left. Notice the cheap little compacts and still he gets his results. My hero.

e-mail? sure, if you like.

2003-05-13T18:14:00.000Z

Have to love this pair of images from a recent Marc Jacobs campaign.

I was at the cinema today. One more depressing film, ‘Lilja4ever’, I won’t describe it. Ugh. Directed by a guy who made one lovely film that reminds me a little of my time in Kopenhagen, but this reminds me of nothing, which for I’m glad.

Heineken are making some ads now that call to both my nationalities. The advert that concerns the Swiss army, I can’t speak on, but they are smarter than that, take it from me. As to the Dutch supermarket, please, did they ever go in one? Just almost every other country has weirder, outlander people than the Netherlands. How did this reputation begin? Compare the Waitrose in Chelsea with the Albert Heijn nearby to Dam Square and tell me which customers look the more conservative.

Is there any nationality but the Dutch more imagined than real?

e-mail? sure, do it.

2003-05-05T13:06:00.000Z

I haven’t been here in a while, I know. And I kind of left things in a mess…

I don’t think many people read this – I know that a few do, but it’s not as if many many people are missing what I write. But I’m in irritation with myself for letting things slid. Not much has happened recently but I still seemed to lose track. There are some notes in my paper diary, but not much.

How can I write on what I don’t understand. I would like to communicate with my future self by means of guttural sounds, this is all I think I could produce.

In the meantime ‘til things come to coalition, a picture. On the side of a Debenhams store near Oxford Street:

Is it only my view, or does this picture look all wrong? How can she drink from her cup of tea in that position? Too uncomfortable, no? Or for sure it’s going to spill. Makes me nervy just to look at it.

e-mail? sure, you’re very welcome.

2003-04-21T22:54:00.000Z

I just heard that Nina Simone is dead. I wonder how *Carel takes this. I’uld phone him, but I guess he’ll talking to other jazz devotionalists. Or maybe listening through all her LPs with the phone off the catch.

I’ll write more later.

So. My weekend wasn’t as I would have expected. Or maybe it was. Sometimes you got a shape of how things will be, but the details can’t be predicted.

Like I said, was a tough daytime preceding on Friday. I think I did right by making a break in the day, doing some relaxation exercises, then having a shower and before putting on clothes having a little to drink. Then putting on cosmetics, as if to go out for the evening, as I’uld apply to go to a club. Plus a little more to drink, and then with a light skirt that I like to cross my legs in and my scooped neck burgundy top.

Just in case *Antony was suffering with impaired sight or something! Sure I was obvious, why not? I had a day of reaching to the point, was not going to tolerate more of the prevarication, not from him, but above all, most especial not from me.

I put on music and danced with it, for about half an hour straight. Secret of mine is to get that first sweat to your skin. Feeling good, exuberant. My window was opened and I heard from beneath the sound beeps of buttons on a mobile pressed. Then my phone rang and it was *Antony. Timed perfect.

Thought I’uld be the true host and help him with a bag if he’d more than one, alcohol hit me as I was on the stairs, just a little. Enough to know.

Truth of it, I recognised his voice so well, but was this him? Taller. Darker in complexion and something immediate to his manner. Other than confidence but very similar. Had he a brother he sent as proxy? Perhaps not quite, but for three moments, I was thinking.

His smile in greeting was nice, in it then traces of the eagerness I recall. Gradually getting used to him. Until the evening I really didn’t think too much on the invitation I made to him, not since the time I contacted him, when my blood was all for it. Now he was here, guess I might be getting what I wanted then, but out of time.

Are you tired Antony? Was it a long flight from St Exupery? ‘Cause I don’t care, the English are howling and bawling outside their pubs and we’re gonna get ourselves filled with beer right in among with them.

So I took him on out and we found one with a garden, maybe not the big crowd of drinkers that almost never happens that way in France, but the atmosphere of many people who will not be ending the night in sobriety. I found us a place to perch, loitered untidy on a brick wall at the edge, overlooking the street with fumes of cars to taste with the beer. I bought him a full pint and one for me, Lowenbrau, it’s not the strongest, but *Patty’s favourite, she calls it ‘Laughing Brew’. I’ll create a coarse Brit from the material of *Antony.

Okay, so were compulsory catch-up subjects. We really didn’t stay in touch as we should, but, you know. Apart from being moved for his work to Lyon, this man got himself nearly engaged and then broken with since we last spoke. I told him about the *Jan thing. Like all, he thought that was to be forever. When he said it was to him a shame, I believe him. Yuh, we made a picture a lot of people liked to look at I guess.

Then I twisted up the conversation to my way. I got him to saying which of the bourgeois chicas in halter tops at the other side to the yard he’d like to ball if he was given the chance – I like it when you can get a man to tell you what they look for in a woman, often they will hold such information close like a secret precious thing that would hurt them if any other woman knew it. And in return he asked me, and I liked that, and I lied all to hell, choosing of the guys I could see, not the worst, but not my real types. Was fun.

I showed him the trick of the double round before closing time, and we walked home with full glasses, having to drink quick not to spill, but at this time I was much drunker than I meant to be, was worse that I insisted we finish our drinks before entering the building. Hiccups!

Damn, it’s difficult to fuck with hiccups, but more so to get a guy to do it when you’re caught between hiccups and laughter, can hardly breathe. And he was not as drunk as me which was a difficulty. He sort of wanted to, but couldn’t take advantage. He said this the next day. At the time, I said he couldn’t get it up and he proved me wrong, but put it away again before I could reach to it. I couldn’t have gone to sleep normally, I must have passed out. The next morning my pants were on and his were not, strange situation.

Before breakfast I vomited some, then was ready to make food. The night before we forgot to eat. We put in bad new greasy toxins to drive out the bad old alcohol, and didn’t leave my place ‘til past noontime. Day was grey and fit for shit, in my opinion, we hung out in galleries, moving slowly as we could, kind of tiptoeing through our heads. We passed by Victoria station, they were peeling the roof from where the buses stand. Something fell and the noise was in my head, ow! Guess I forgot my hydration.

*Antony was seeing things new, and often I enjoy to be in the company of such people, it makes me see it all fresh, too. Not this time, shame. I don’t know what was blocking me. It wasn’t only being hanged over.

We talked and it was nothing special. Like we were once co-workers, meeting for a project again. Wasn’t even disappointed. Our legs got tired and we caught the buses around and about, until it was nearly fully dark, and we just sat in the front and watched the streets go under us. I wondered what he was thinking. I didn’t want so much to know. But I wanted to want to know.

Back home I cooked up one of my specials. We went to bed and he asked if I wanted to, and we had sex. Was quite okay, but only about ten minutes. Wasn’t with the sort of urgency that gets me off quick, either.

Next morning he was up before me and dressed before I could catch him for me. Furiating, ‘cause I woke up horny as all get out and there was nothing I could really do.

I better post this entry, before I lose it like the last.

e-mail? sure, feel free

2003-04-18T18:35:00.000Z

Today has been all sorts of gone wrong, which is not right since the weather is so agreeable. It might get better later, or it might just get worse, but for sure it won’t stay the same. Bring it on, break or make I say.

The dam breaks and the first of my British Summer Time visitors arrives this evening. I invited this one, so I’m not to complain, and when I invited him I had a specific reason to do so. I guess I still have but somehow the need is less. Yet things might work well. They might work really well, in which case, yay! Or bad? I’m taking a chance, but I can book him a hotel and even put it on my card if I need. I’ve got to take chances some times…

I wonder how he’s changed? *Antony was in his way in turn sweet and infuriating, careless and attentive, you wanted to cuddle him or to clear up his mess. For me, his time wasn’t right, for me Paris had become a metro map of entanglement, lines down which I could go, that I could not, intersections that attracted, correpondences that repelled, and he arrived at my Chatelet – les Halles of it all, damnit. And he tried for the while, really he did. He was persistent, but so cutely. In truth, I wanted to reserve him for another time somehow, but another girl found him and kind of took him in as a stray, so I didn’t worry anymore. But I stayed in touch. I wonder how many of my male friends, if only I were to know myself, I keep in my address-book and hydrate occasionally with a little light contact by postcarte or e-mail, for this deliberate reason.

Serve you right *Sophie, if he has become foul, a pig. Or will simply not wish to ‘pay his rent’. I really don’t know him. I really don’t. Shit, what am I doing? His plane will land at 20:15. Soon he will be here. And it’s so right that nothing can stop that.

*Roberto got back in touch, and was straight away hinting that I make dinner for him in return for the last time. But I wanted business to be taken care of before anything, and soon, I won’t wait ‘til Tuesday, which is as early as I get to be free. So I said maybe we have a picnic?

He did it again, when we met at Hyde Parc Corner, he saw me first and called to me, lifting his sunglasses to identify himself. His eyes are gorgeous and he knows it. I wonder that a man with eyes like that doesn’t have wealth, he could have anything… As we moved to walk into the park he put his hand at the lowest place of my back, I recall it, his palm to my spine, his fingers almost to my side. Does he know that sometimes I like that the best? It’s this that makes it worth my struggle.

Difficult to recount the pathway of the conversation. I tried to steer my way, after we had been an hour, to a frank discussion of what he feels for me. But I was cowardly, not forthright – not like me at all! And also was so relaxing, to be in the park with this guy and talk of things that aren’t so frustrating. Sometime on though, he got a headache, suggested ‘why don’t we go see a movie?’ Me, I’ve been to the cinema already this week, and on a nice day, to sit in a dark room? Well, sure, to be agreeable… Yet it was a little vexing, and I think I betrayed it by snapping ‘no’ to many of his suggestions. There was one he pointed to, we both didn’t know, but it has Vincent Cassel! So I said ‘yes’. (When I was in Paris, I always had my eyes open that I might see him. In that time I saw Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Paul Gaultier, but never him)

The film was very cheap (I think a special offer, £3:50, or circa €$2.20), but the cinema was strange. The room sags in the middle and slopes up towards the screen. I think the film was just about as awful as any I have seen. The camera was swaying around, not like the hand-held, but really spinning and up and down, through all degrees. And it was dark and noisy and viciously violent. It was just so bad. I wish I kept in touch with cinema better, that I knew what my Vinz was gotten into. I guess it probably wasn’t a bad film in art, but such nastiness to the viewer. Nearly I was shaking and I wanted it to stop. I won’t ‘review’ it here, but it goes in reverse, the worst is to begin, but that doesn’t help it somehow. Even when I saw Vincent’s lovely lean body naked and rolled about in bed, during a nicer scene, I couldn’t appreciate it. Normally I can watch any film but that was too much for me.

My plan had been after the movie to take *Roberto to St. Jameses Park (he’s never been) and find a quiet place to talk. But I couldn’t, I wasn’t in the mood to talk of what makes a person want, or not want, to fuck another. That film had got among the context of the day and I’m going to have a little sleep and then shower and maybe a little drink before *Antony arrives, but up ‘til this point I’uld like 1 hour and forty minutes of this afternoon not to have happened, actually.

e-mail? sure, feel free

2003-04-17T22:12:00.000Z

I went out with *Inka to the movies and to eat last night. The film was at the Barbarican, which I forswore to ever access again, but she promised she’uld hold my hand and not abandon me to the place. They make sure the cinema is good and hidden. You go first to one cinema, but the film isn’t there, it’s in another cinema, which is only seven floors above, and if you’re *Sophie and *Inka in a hurry you don’t think to look for an elevator… then you get there and it’s the longest corridor. You’re familiar with getting through check in at the last moment and finding that your gate is the furthest? Much like that but without a travelator.

Elsker Dig for Evigt, if your Duits language is good, check out the site I linked to the title. Sloooow loader. I like with so many Danish films I see that even when the characters are mad or bad and trying their best to be hateful, you still want just to hug them and make it all right for them. Not something I often feel for real people, but look to all the sad films: The Idiots, Italiensk for Begyndernne, Sma Ulykker. People are angry, or alcoholic, or no longer certain of themselves or their religion and in crisis. And my heart goes towards them, I can’t help it. In this film was the same – Cecile, Marie, Niels, even Joachim, and also his nurse Hanne, and poor Stine and even little Gustav (hang on, how’d a Swede get in there?) with his expressing little face, so serious behind spectacles. The Play Station didn’t help him and he needed a long cuddle and to feel secure, you could tell. Credits were strange, something to do with heat?

Later in the restaurant, *Inka says ‘we aren’t that bad’, but I got close to them, remember, some ways they are. Was good to see some sights again, blurry, in snow, I wish I’d seen that, looks so right. Copenhagen looks good in rain, sometimes people would complain in the sun, it’s true.

We had a good talk, as people do when not in the workplace, shame that she had to go home early that she did, but she has her responsibilities.

e-mail? sure, feel free

2003-04-14T22:08:00.000Z

This weekend I saw these, and some others, drawings by Antony Gormley, who has been also responsible for the large statue ‘The Angel of the North’. I want to see that one day, but it’s out in the countryside so I’ll need someone to drive me. For now these provoked thought. They made me feel queasy, but in the mind only. It was like a kind of anatomy lesson, but in feelings, men’s feelings. He traces a line through the head and chest and stomach down to the penis. He has done paintings of his own blood. And also of his semen, but only a very small drop. Perhaps he was tired, or had been recently spent.

This is all at the British Museum.

My calls aren’t being returned. E-mails nor. Pffft. Guess I’d better think to something else.

e-mail? sure, feel free

2003-04-13T21:20:00.000Z

This was a feeling that was developing before last weekend, but now it’s taken a form I can recognise.

Sometimes what you think you got isn’t really what it was at all. A few weeks beyond when I was in Geneve and it’s like *Milo was never in me, not truly, not since last year, in fact. Now I know that what I felt was sadness not that we’uld never do that again, but that it was for the last time in another place, long before. It was right, but it didn’t satisfy as it should. Should have been a feast, was a sandwich at my desk and back to work. No, I don’t now how to signify it right.

Superficial, that it was good in the moment. Then, like how you forget dreams quicker, more totally than reality, the feel of a wonderful thing had happened, it’s not there anymore. I’m back with the square numbered one. Positively, I realise again that to be with someone in that enjoyment isn’t impossible, I don’t feel ‘will I ever again?’, I’ve got past that. But it’s not etched in me, not at all.

This doesn’t distance me from *Milo, I miss him a little. I wonder what he feels?

e-mail? sure, feel free

2003-04-11T02:57:00.000Z

Niets is erger dan die onzekerheid. It troubles me, really does, it’s an itch I can’t scratch, like the sort one experiences in one’s navel that repeat in the knee cap and nothing you can do can reach it.

And then at some point I’ll just switch down, go numb, automatic cut-out on the subject. It’s mechanical, I guess, stops me overheating. But for now I’m overanalysing, like crazy. Time-consuming and yet I don’t get to the truth of it. I’ve e-mailed him, didn’t broach the subject in electronic words. Got a call out to him, too. Only tonight, though. We’ll see what we shall see.

I go back to thinking how this kind of thing happens. It’s the study I should be using my diaries for, that I’m meant to be reading and didn’t yet. But I crawled through some, to incidents I recall. Question. What makes men turn off from sex?

In order of chronology, speaking strictly these I can remember. I’m discounting where they had too much alcohol or buzz.

With *Jac it was a natural thing. We were friends way before, then we got to being more than friends, but was nearly year from our first kiss to consummation. We were kids and it was like play to us. Fooling around is fun, but when one is in middle teens sex can seem a little serious. Only later you find that it’s play too, but that’s later. Looking back now it’s funny how little of urgency we felt. I think I’m right to speak for him, too. Don’t you just know when a guy wants something? For sure he wanted it, and I didn’t pressure him, but I think it was my imperative to get to it finally, like a thing I needed him to do for me.

I had those condoms from Moeder for the longest time.

With hindsight, and distance perhaps I could contact *Carel, ask him. We had a few close moments, when sitting late into the night with drinks and music got us into things we didn’t intend to begin. There are no explanations that I remember, or can I find. Take a journal entry from an undated point (for a while I had a philosophy of never fixing a calendar to my writings). This is translated quick and crappy, for the utility of analysing.

Precrastination is me. There’s just so much I need to do that I forget how much there is in my piles of tasks. Pffff, I could give a damn. Plus to my mind socialisation is a good excuse for no work today, ‘cause time with good people produces something intangible but of good value.

So that’s right.

*Carel phoned me in work and was wanting to come over. I thought, guess it’s bad met de tienermeisje, again. Again. Foo, he learns nothing. Everyone to his weakness, but I’m not cruel if I say that that she’ll be his death, and not a little one either. What’s the attraction? Does he want just to bash his head against her, ‘til his brains run dry. I think it must be masochisme, for what else explanation is there? Yet he’s a strong man in other ways, perhaps every but this.

For instance, *X insisted him to go with her to [was a shitty disco place] where she then made to ignore him all the evening except to buy the drinks and was even he thinks flirting with some guy of her age, perhaps just to rile *Carel or not just that. Then he says was good in bed afterwards – please, respect yourself. Buh.

Things like that are one problem friends don’t able to fix. Just have to let them learn on their own. So I accepted him to come visit so longs we didn’t discuss on *X.

Was good to see him, we finished my stew and he praised it! From anyone else, sure, that’s usual, I knew it was a good one, without modesty. But from a Magyar guy, well, can I get it in writing? I’ll be opening that restaurant right along. I like to see him eat, so enthusiastic.

He brought with some of that heavy red he likes, I like too. An acquired taste, and he’s relentless with his eulogies. Time ran by, and he was meant to phone *X, and I didn’t let him to use his portable (no portables in the home is my rule. I’uld rather you take a piss in the corner), so he missed it. Sure she’s in bed by a certain time, to be Morning Fresh for school next day.

Had some more of records he borrowed from Pa and returned, so we listened to them. I prefer the voice to the music in jazz when it’s vocal, I wish I could hear by itself that soft and grainy sound of heartstruck women, without all the squealing and banging by the background.

Once we had too much drink to properly do so I got the notion that we draw each other, was good fun. *Carel insisted me to pull down my top at the shoulders, so he could draw my collar bone truly. Which made me feel kind of funny, though I wasn’t showing any more than that, I got self conscious, but in an exciting way. I couldn’t draw for shit, and just made a big hairy impression of him – ‘cause I made him to take the tie from his hair. He looked wild, most especially as he looked at me to sight his sketching.

So that got me a little way turned on and perhaps him too, for what we did next was I said that he should stay, it was raining and so on. I had to persuade only a little. Then we were talking again and I don’t remember for what, but he hugged me and it took on from there.

I thought, this time, this time we’ll really do it. But no. I can’t guess why, but he didn’t want to do the last main thing. I had to fight back a feeling to which I hadn’t entitlement, being annoyed at *X. Which wasn’t jealousy, she doesn’t take anything that is mine, *Carel belongs to himself, but could not shake the idea that it was her fault that she had affected him to prevent this. He wasn’t acting out of fidelity to her, but what was stopping him?

Because you don’t:
lie on a bed as two naked people making out
give a girl a climax with your fingers
use your mouth on her nipples like a baby
be hard and let her stroke you until, nearly

and keep faithful. My morals may be warped (thx *Milo), but I know this. I asked him what was the matter, but he only shook his head. So I asked him frankly how far we could go and he said, ‘Not that or your mouth’. Which meant I didn’t feel I could ask for his tongue. Was a shame, as I had a sudden passion to feel a guy with beard between my thighs, especially after the sensation of it on my chest. Wouldn’t have guessed it to be my thing. How many men have beards now?

Sleeping with him was difficult. He slept and I did not, until maybe five. Then he was up at six and thirty, so I didn’t wake the last until maybe 14.45. So another day is gone, mostly. I’m for certain going to invite *Milo tonight, now, goodbye to the evening.

What I’m thinking is that perhaps now he isn’t so close to the intensity of it he might tell me? It doesn’t match well with Sunday’s *Roberto Not Experience, but I just need some clues, anything. And I think the two of them in a way have things in common.

There was another example but I’m too tired to look at now.

Easier and quicker and more useful would be for *Roberto to simply tell me why. Or better yet, just put out damn it!

e-mail? sure, feel free

2003-04-08T23:06:00.000Z

Tuesday Eight of April 2003

Now I’m a bit displeased at myself for racing off to the station and coming back to town straight away yesterday. I might not ever see Croydon again, I doubt it’s such of a cool place as that, but all the more reason I should have looked around when I was there.

But since I didn’t have to go to work, though another someone did, oh sure that’s important… Anyway, I went home and did all the showery sort of thing you do when you want draw the line on the day before. I should have slept, but there was sun. Here, you make of it what you can.

So okay, I’m chewing at my tongue on how frustrated I was about *Roberto, but we had good conversation, I mean we had everything but. And he recommended me to go and Canary Wharf and some Underground stations on the way, too. He’s an architecture nut, did I say?

We had a good debate on that. That if capitalism is so bad, why is it often so beautiful? For this case, he thinks it is. I think it looks cold.

As you can see, I salvaged, I went out and took a lookie. It was interesting. But it didn’t move me. People were working, not living. I had to play with the photo programme on my computer to like it.

This was a nice station, Southwark. I didn’t like the grey all over, but the blue tilings were good. Pity I didn’t photo that part.

And near to this was a street in Southwark itself. I wanted to see it from ground level, but from one part of Waterloo station to Southwark Underground, you can’t get out. I tried. I’ll see it one day.

Mmm. My photos may not be all of that, but I’m liking that I don’t lose all the edges on this new image host.

e-mail? sure, feel free

Monday Seven of April 2003

After so long again our schedules permit it and yesterday I got to see *Roberto again. How to describe it?

Right now I close doors and have to be careful to resist to slam them hard when I do.

Was good so far as it went. So far as we went. He cooked for me, two men cooking for me in such a small period, it’s happened before, but not very often. I couldn’t help comparing, for all that he is dark, and seeming intense, his food was, what can I write? It was delicate, and really quite aesthetic, a series of arrangements in off-white. Believe me, if it wasn’t that it might have been wrong-mannered, I’uld have photographed the main course, chicken breast, white sauce, a kind of risotto accompanying, it was really very good. Nothing strong in flavour, in this way it was the sort of meal one could eat before kissing and not worry on the taste. Which is a silly worry, I know, ‘cause one’s lover has most often eaten same. But it happens.

Travelling to meet him was an interesting journey, I always wanted to take a train from Victoria station, now I have. The train was fast, but it made it seem further, rows and rows of low houses wishing by and still not there, still not there. Then suddenly, office blocks, almost sky-scraping, like a small city. I never heard of Croydon before, I don’t know why. *Roberto met me at the station. There were trams, it was busy, not like a suburb at all.

His crowded noisy house was empty, in luck his room-mates were all staying their weekends elsewhere. It’s a shabby place, but nicely cared for, as with adult students or something. Difficult to move around in, but soon you’re comfortable. He says he’s moving soon.

We were getting on well, again, there’s always a little concern that may be what was there before might not be now, but no, still strong.

I made the move on him, had intended to when he next got up from the sofa, but he smiled or laughed or, damnit I forget what, I couldn’t resist. He seemed shyer than before, not resisting, but hesitating, or maybe wanted to take it slow. Which was cute for a while, but I wanted to accelerate, got onstride him and getting at his sweater, hell, British spring and all the clothes people have to wear.

I like men to wear thin trousers, not thick denim, ‘cause I like it when they give themselves away. I like to feel against my thigh a rigid twitching lump of betrayed lust. Not just that you know you’re doing something right for sure, it’s a turn-on for itself. And what he can’t know but I hope he can guess is what it’s doing for me.

I tell you, he’s got a lovely torso. Skinny, but with just a little definition. Not muscular, but, you know, he could if he wanted to. Just about anything. And he’s dark, like a tan was there just a month ago. A line of hair that reaches right to his belly button.

So when you have his t-shirt up to his armpits, he should be trying to undress you back, but he didn’t, I removed my cardigan myself. And when I moved against him, sure he moved back, but not so much. I was with two minds to ask him what was wrong, or just go for his belt, hurry us a bit. But he said something like: ‘We’ve both got to be up for work in the morning.’ Which I receive as ‘BED’ and what that means. After it all, it’s only about half past midnight, not late, late, late. Plus which, what’s work but the uncomfortable place you sleep after the night before, yuh?

We get up and he asks if I want to stay. But of course, I say. For sure, I think.

And he shows me my room for the night. That is to say not his.

Fuck. Or rather, not Fuck.

So picture me, pity me, standing there looking at a complete stranger’s unmade single bed, a quiet night’s sleep ahead of me and above all, a puddle in my knickers. Is this a joke? Helaas niet.

I was going to say something and then I didn’t, and he showed me the upstairs bathroom, and he kissed me goodnight, like a brother would, on the lips, but still somehow like family. Turned to go to his room, I got behind him and groped his crotch, playful but last chance to change his mind, but his cock was gone and so was he. Then I just went from tingled to numb.

I left super-early, soon following the light. I would have looked in on him, but couldn’t bear it to. Got lost at first but found the tram wires to follow, down to the station.

I’m not seeing him again until we’ve spoken properly about this. I won’t go through that again.

e-mail? sure, feel free

Saturday Five of April 2003

I fixed to meet *Milo for reasons which are kind of obvious. I don’t handle this dry spell thing well. *Roberto may or may don’t happen, and I’m in difficulties with the concept of monogamy at best of times, before the fact, nuh.

It was time really. It seems to be every year at about this time, he didn’t comment on this schedule, I guessed he knew though. Old times, like the studio on Wednesday night. It makes me feel like I went back to a town and it didn’t change, the station, cycle parking, cafes and bars and an atmosphere in the mid-afternoon. The paving blocks in the sidewalk is new, a supermarkt changes proprietor, but it’s the same town. I know my way around.

Every time we return to each other he has lost a little more of his edges, or so it seems. People might call this maturing, I suppose that’s valid. The core is him. His inconsistency was something I didn’t like until now in memory, his balance out of rhythm was not something I remembered, but what I would expect to find.

He cooked for me, very him, dark sauce, chunks of meat, wine in everything, pungent. We talked a long time, with cigarettes, more wine, coffee. Then on his carpet, but I remember the lower part of my thighs and calfs were on the floorboards, cold to begin.

Technically very good. I picked up his tune straight away, his national anthem, hum along with it and I got where I wanted to go pretty quick. For the soul, before and after was the best, but for all the moving parts, it worked.

Second time was actually better in the morning, from being asleep to this in a few minutes, I like that it can happen. This is just about the only thing I can do before coffee, surprising to myself that it can be so. Wild and hard, the mad horse is riding me, kind of like that. Sheer energy and sweat, yes, dripping off him. Twisted around and half out of the bed, my head nearly to touch the floor. So being off-centre was the theme for that encounter.

Only later I felt a bit melancholy. *Solange is pregnant with their child, and I don’t think he’ll want to revisit us in that way when they are living together. I guess this is the symptom to the cohort of our age.

Maybe I feel more confident now. Back in control. It was becoming so problematic. As *Patty would say, of other things (most often her portable phone account) ‘It ain’t fuckin brain surgery!’.

This place for buying books on the southern bank (like the one by the Seine, but not as big) will be the death of me. I don’t have time for all this paper and print. I took books to the park today. I think I’m going to be living outside a bit more now. But they warn me that things don’t stay the same here and pretty soon all this light will be gone again…

e-mail? sure, feel free

Thursday Three of April 2003

I got my days in lieu this week. So went back to Geneve, a bit of a stealth visit, ‘cause I wasn’t to do the social roundabout this time. I hope I didn’t offend anyone by not meeting them – it just wasn’t the right time.

For which Pa was disappointed. When he says things are so quiet when I’m not about, it’s not really all me that makes it that way, it’s my friends, he misses them too. Though *Marcus still drops by for dinner about two months frequency – I think they have a son now? And they are proud of him for his new girlfriend, who is not like me one bit. That’s strange! But I think they were never unconditional, and this is a proof of it. And they saw *Kassje twice since Christmastime. Moeder’s favourite, after me I hope…

Things change, nothing changes. Their new tenant is cool, I see some of the ideas for interior style that I had for the attic reappearing. I like her, most especially ‘cause she let me stay there last night while she was away to see her man in Montreux. For the sake of old times it was good. Plus she gets fed sometimes downstairs, but I can see why Moeder would try to, the girl, she’s truly thin. Anyways, the night the place felt strange, the morning as I woke it felt so like home I got a bit melancholy, but not with regret.

Tuesday night I spent with *Milo. Not straightforward I’ll write on that later.

I’m reading Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’. *Milo always told me I should see ‘Apocolypse Now’ and was in apoplexy that I displayed no desire to do so when the ‘Redux’ re-release came out. So I am coming to it fresh, I mentioned again when we met and he exacted a promise from me that I would.

All this from overhearing the number 253 bus from Euston to Hackney described by a colleague as being like the river trip in that book. So before I see the Coppola movie, I better take a bus to Northeastern London.

Occidental girls are chattering beneath my window, too cold but I can’t bear to close it, the sound flutters up like trapped bird calls.

Tomorrow I work, then the weekend. How cool is that?

e-mail? sure, feel free

Sunday Twenty-Eight of March 2003

So anyways, the day got a good start. Dreams like I haven’t had for some time. I’m opportunistic, I don’t snub what gifts come to me. They weren’t the real thing, but next best is sometimes fantastic.

There was a little trick I had when I was younger. Not very much so long ago, but I guess I’ve changed somewhat, not so wired and teenage? And I think I discovered it when I was real young anyway, but I only really used it a bit later. It involved being sure to go to bed uncomfortable – that way you get dreams. Not so easy, cause you have to be able to sleep, but there has to be that kind of irritational feeling. Grit in the pearl, yuh? Love that saying-so.

It involves wearing pj bottoms, big knicks will do instead. When you put your book down and turn off the lights, girls, pull them up on your waist as high as they go, just enough that you get to thinking ‘that’s constricting’. Then go to sleep like that if you can. Then around about the times of the rapid-eye-movements, you should get some hot dreams. It goes that way for me.

And it did last night, or rather this morning, though I didn’t do it so deliberately. I was having some real whacky dreams before, I’uld wake, then sleep, all through the dawn time. Then the first one on the subject, it wasn’t so straightforward. I ‘knew’ I was in Deventer, but it looked like Leiden, but kind of hip and alternative. And I went to an appointment, or meeting, like for business or an interview, and as well as the guy doing the talking was another ‘applicant’, she was a lot like a girl I went to University with. I remember her in reality clearer than from the dream – she was always in skirts or shorts, she did sports and picked up bruises and grazes all over, so for which reason I seemed to be very aware of her legs. And we were being both interviewed…

…then the man says, ‘okay, you two should get it on together’. Being in a dream this of course seems easy, but still there’s some doubt – first I’m thinking, I didn’t already say hello to this girl I used once to know, then well, I’ve got to pretend to enjoy doing this, or perhaps it might even be fun. Then she seemed to be into it, then was insistent to turn her back to me. I wasn’t sure what to do (as is always!), but kind of made the motions. Then the man seemed to disappear, I thought, we’re doing it, he should at least be here to watch. I wanted to find him, but now she wouldn’t let me go, and it was suddenly that she had on full make-up and looked quite beautiful. So we went back to it, and I was surprising myself, when was a fire alarm…

…which in reality was a car alarm. Bastard! For once I’m going to find what it’s like to have intercourse with another woman and really enjoy it, and a piece of tin and rubber, not even on my street, pulls me out of it.

It must have switched off, I had one of those funny waking dreams where one imagines actually getting up and doing something, for this which was closing up my window. And I was straight back into it, but a very different scene. I was meant to be meeting with *Roberto (you can guess what I’ve been looking forward to nowadays!), in a library, but it was a café also. All the books were in shelves set into the tables – I had a really useless design idea in that dream, I guess. Another man came to my table, and perhaps being Dream-Sophie, who can do anything, I left for another room with him. He said he knew what I was there for and I said yes, he was right. Got to it pretty quickly. After the dream I was really quick to write down what I could remember, but I still couldn’t quite recall the sensations. Once we were started his face changed a bit, at first a bit like Gustav, then a lot like Pablo, which was kind of embarrassing, specially after the misunderstanding we had in Helsinki. But he wasn’t really anyone, and I was thinking that, this a stranger, this is a stranger. I could see clouds and pink sky (yes, I dream in colour!) and physically it was really good and then I woke. You can guess that I didn’t jump from my bed straightaway.

After that the first slice of today was strange, that only a really intense dream can do to you, after shower, breakfast and coffee, it still is with you. Couldn’t get it out of my mind, it made me smile right out a few times.

I looked for clothes for the summer and I think everyone else had the same thought. I’ll go again on a week day.

I saw so many Sikhs today. I think it was a festival. They looked gentle and wise in their turbans, Strange to think they were once a warlike people in India, and still can carry ornamental daggers. I should read about them.

The light in the evening is nice. Even then I didn’t want to leave the park when dusk came.

e-mail? sure, feel free

2003-04-05T19:52:00.000Z

2003-03-30T23:54:00.000Z

So anyways, the day got a good start. Dreams like I haven’t had for some time. I’m opportunistic, I don’t snub what gifts come to me. They weren’t the real thing, but next best is sometimes fantastic.

There was a little trick I had when I was younger. Not very much so long ago, but I guess I’ve changed somewhat, not so wired and teenage? And I think I discovered it when I was real young anyway, but I only really used it a bit later. It involved being sure to go to bed uncomfortable – that way you get dreams. Not so easy, cause you have to be able to sleep, but there has to be that kind of irritational feeling. Grit in the pearl, yuh? Love that saying-so.

It involves wearing pj bottoms, big knicks will do instead. When you put your book down and turn off the lights, girls, pull them up on your waist as high as they go, just enough that you get to thinking ‘that’s constricting’. Then go to sleep like that if you can. Then around about the times of the rapid-eye-movements, you should get some hot dreams. It goes that way for me.

And it did last night, or rather this morning, though I didn’t do it so deliberately. I was having some real whacky dreams before, I’uld wake, then sleep, all through the dawn time. Then the first one on the subject, it wasn’t so straightforward. I ‘knew’ I was in Deventer, but it looked like Leiden, but kind of hip and alternative. And I went to an appointment, or meeting, like for business or an interview, and as well as the guy doing the talking was another ‘applicant’, she was a lot like a girl I went to University with. I remember her in reality clearer than from the dream – she was always in skirts or shorts, she did sports and picked up bruises and grazes all over, so for which reason I seemed to be very aware of her legs. And we were being both interviewed…

…then the man says, ‘okay, you two should get it on together’. Being in a dream this of course seems easy, but still there’s some doubt – first I’m thinking, I didn’t already say hello to this girl I used once to know, then well, I’ve got to pretend to enjoy doing this, or perhaps it might even be fun. Then she seemed to be into it, then was insistent to turn her back to me. I wasn’t sure what to do (as is always!), but kind of made the motions. Then the man seemed to disappear, I thought, we’re doing it, he should at least be here to watch. I wanted to find him, but now she wouldn’t let me go, and it was suddenly that she had on full make-up and looked quite beautiful. So we went back to it, and I was surprising myself, when was a fire alarm…

…which in reality was a car alarm. Bastard! For once I’m going to find what it’s like to have intercourse with another woman and really enjoy it, and a piece of tin and rubber, not even on my street, pulls me out of it.

It must have switched off, I had one of those funny waking dreams where one imagines actually getting up and doing something, for this which was closing up my window. And I was straight back into it, but a very different scene. I was meant to be meeting with *Roberto (you can guess what I’ve been looking forward to nowadays!), in a library, but it was a café also. All the books were in shelves set into the tables – I had a really useless design idea in that dream, I guess. Another man came to my table, and perhaps being Dream-Sophie, who can do anything, I left for another room with him. He said he knew what I was there for and I said yes, he was right. Got to it pretty quickly. After the dream I was really quick to write down what I could remember, but I still couldn’t quite recall the sensations. Once we were started his face changed a bit, at first a bit like Gustav, then a lot like Pablo, which was kind of embarrassing, specially after the misunderstanding we had in Helsinki. But he wasn’t really anyone, and I was thinking that, this a stranger, this is a stranger. I could see clouds and pink sky (yes, I dream in colour!) and physically it was really good and then I woke. You can guess that I didn’t jump from my bed straightaway.

After that the first slice of today was strange, that only a really intense dream can do to you, after shower, breakfast and coffee, it still is with you. Couldn’t get it out of my mind, it made me smile right out a few times.

I looked for clothes for the summer and I think everyone else had the same thought. I’ll go again on a week day.

I saw so many Sikhs today. I think it was a festival. They looked gentle and wise in their turbans, Strange to think they were once a warlike people in India, and still can carry ornamental daggers. I should read about them.

The light in the evening is nice. Even then I didn’t want to leave the park when dusk came.

e-mail? sure, feel free

2003-03-29T19:39:00.000Z

Regarding technology I’m a sulky girl facing up to a chore. I try to put it off and when a thing becomes inevitable I wail: do I have to? Among some things I haven’t done is to learn to HTML – is it a verb? It’s for sure a torture, I enjoy learning languages, but not this code. Perhaps it’s that it asks perfection, the slightest mis-applied dot renders all unintelligible. Not the same with speech, I can always get by…

Howsever, I fixed a problem I had with the pictures, I think. I was stressing that I was losing too much quality, ‘cause they had to be a little file size or my storage ‘uld get used too soon. How many pixels are in a byte? What do the dots per inch signify? Why is it even measured in Empirial anyway? So I’ve now got another provider, they don’t allow many pictures for each user, but they can be heavy. So my pictures can have more quality. Okay, or be more detailed. Means they’ll take longer to load. Patience please! Or get to make yourself a cup of tea.

I’m juggling in my calendar, such a queue of people to stay with me now Spring is here. Easter, don’t talk with me about ! I should live in a big town huis, slender but tall, with so many rooms that I could even forget which guests were staying. I’uld have many around, for weeks at a time if they like, but a scret room at the top, would be my refuge, to look across the rooftops and be free.

Is it normal for so many tourists to be in London? They say there are fewer now there’s the war, but there seem to be more than in Paris. Perhaps similar to Amsterdam, if that place was ten times bigger. I like it, the variety of languages, all the people seeing this city for the first time.

To me also it feels like a new place, since the weather was warmer. I walk slower, I notice more. Best of it all is in the evenings, windows are open, odour of cooking, noise of laughter and music, life was always happening, but now so evident.

It’s the season of building, too. Edifices are disappearing behind scaffold frames and plastic shrouds and the monkeys who climb them are everywhere with jolly yelling.

Today was warm, but with a haze, it looked like this:

Mostly was bright, except for this moment I chose to photograph these daffodils.

A man on the BBC Radio 4 morning programme was talking in praise of them. Many flowers in English parks are kept not in separate planting places, but thrown about like surprises. One can sit between the crowds of stalks. I did, to have my breakfast today.

e-mail? sure, feel free

2003-03-28T00:32:00.000Z

The second biggest news item in Britain right now is that a retired soldier has been cheating in a TV quiz show. It’s been this way for more than a week now. Intermittently it’s displaced for a day by an item on the latest young woman to be strangled or beaten to death (this is now happening often) but right after, it’s back a thing about coughing and pager messages on Who Wants to be a Millionare.

There are many other European countries I could have come to in December, did I really choose right?

I talked to *Roberto earlier, he called me first, that’s nice. His flat is noisy! As if he lives with a dozen other people. Perhaps he does, I didn’t ask. Next time I think I’ll phone his portable and then I can take me into his own room (!). For our next date he wants to take me to Croydon. He has some strange ideas for dates, but I didn’t offer my option because he seemed keen. I’ve never been to the deep South of the suburbs.

I think I worked out how to make my archives work on this site. I’ve been very lazy, I was meant to learn how to do ‘HTML’ and make my own page, but I just can’t get excited for it. But pretty soon this page will take less time to load and not be such a big nuisance.

e-mail? sure, feel free

2003-03-26T18:06:00.000Z

A girl is singing beneath my window, and the window is OPEN. And how strange it is, I don’t have experience of warmth in the London air. People are in skirts and t-shirts, they sit on every piece of grass

Today in work *Inka introduced me to the British concept of ‘The Wrong Type Of…’ This is when things breakdown because of the weather, but the weather is special, and trains are stopped by the wrong type of snow, or slide on their rails in autumn with the wrong type of leaves.

This she told me when on the internet news we saw that all the tanks were stopped in Iraq because it was windy. With the wrong type of sand.

There was a cute little picture of a 70 years old farmer who had found a US helicopter on his land. They should let him keep it.

e-mail? sure, feel free

2003-03-23T18:54:00.000Z

Spring!

It really happened, in Herbrand Street, WC1 midday, Sunday 23 March 2003.
And by good chance I was there to see it.

2003-03-23T15:00:00.000Z

So… one thing got lost when I was spirited away to the Northern Wildernesses. I had a date with *Roberto that weekend. He’s a patient guy. By miracle, on Saturday, we met.

He knows how to show a girl a good time, for sure. And to make sure she gets her exercise. That’s even before anything, you know, happens… As a condition of meeting me he said that we must go on the anti-war march in London. Lots of walking then!

Our rendezvous was at Warren Street Underground station, it was quite crowded at that time, would I miss *Roberto in all the people? I was a little late because the buses weren’t circulating, and I had to go by train. But he must have been expecting me to go that way, because as I came to the barrier, he was there. I didn’t in reality see him – I saw his eyes. I tell you they seemed to float in air, somehow. And that gaze met mine in just a moment and then, I guess he didn’t recognise at first, he looked away. And then back again. And I couldn’t look any other way and I made accidents with my ticket at the gate. Embarrassing, but I didn’t feel that way then.

Said Hi and out into the sun and I don’t know what I could have done if he had not put on sunglasses. Normally I’m so blasé about dates, I almost have none, but I don’t feel stress, but this occasion, my tongue was tied up a bit. He talked, I listened, then he said: ‘But only I’m talking!’

It’s a unique way to see the city, in among a big crowd of people, in the roadway, with pavements either side, and bodies between oneself and the shops and sidewalk. I think we went along Shaftesbury Avenue, and past the Les Miserables theatre, Piccadilly Circus, where there was a cheer as we met the other half of the procession. *Roberto told me it was better last time with more people, but it was quite impressing to me. Only I forgot to take photographs until we were nearly at the park:

I don’t know that was about. I’ve only seen before banners for unions. I liked to see this man. An English eccentric!

I think *Roberto wanted to listen to the speeches, but he could understand I was a bit footsore, so we went to pub nearby, also were able to get some food. And to talk. Because it’s kind of strange to be talking on the ‘first date’ subjects in that environment.

So, I think I like him. He’s intelligent, and he wears it lightly. He listens, he connects with what one says. There’s a strange sense of humour in him – things he says burn a little slowly before I recognise the wit of it. Doesn’t hurt that he’s so good to look at, but he would need to close his eyes that you can appreciate it. I had to look in every direction else. Because to look in his eyes is to get caught with them.

It was much later when we left the pub, I think we didn’t know where to next. But the protest was still in progress this time on Oxford Street. It was more chaotic.

A big crowd was in the road and the traffic was blocked by it. Drummers were beating out a rhythm that people were dancing to, and blowing whistles, waving flags. More like a party than a protest! There were also protestors in an office block who had music blaring from above. This man somehow climbed onto the roof of a bus (remember in London buses have two floors to them), I don’t know how. Neither do I know how he got down again!

I would have taken many more pictures, but in darkness my camera needs a steady hand, and I was buzzing from alcohol and the excitement of it.

We were just about to leave when there was some movement in another direction. The whole group set off, first walking down the street, then running into a side street. *Roberto took my hand. Tightly. He glanced to me, smiling wide. His eyes were really more alive than before.

There was a police blockade, we turned another way, just a few policemen trying to keep up, onto the big main road at Marble Arch, halting the traffic. It felt like we could do anything, the city was belonging to us. Then another run, trying to get into another side-street, and so nearly succeeded, but the police were just too quick. Finally by the park railings we were encircled by police, normal ones and I think equivalents of CRS. Despite being trapped, even then was fun. I only discovered then that we had been trying to reach the American Embassy before. There were so many different types of people. Still chanting sometimes, some Arab girls would make a trilling noise that I never heard before, a man made an impressive sound with a big gong that had people cheering, a woman was going around people making a recording with a microphone of the word ‘love’ said by each, a girl did yoga exercises and *Roberto and I were arm in arm.

The space began to empty, people were slowly let out, very slowly. I almost didn’t want it to end, but I guess for longer I might have been worried about my freedom. Plus which, pretty soon I’uld have really needed to piss!

So, we kissed in goodbye, at Hyde Park Corner and I got my bus home. The kiss was good. Damned good. It made me shake a bit and want to stamp at the pavement. For now, it was a climax to the evening.

Last night when I closed my eyes, first to masturbate, second to sleep, I couldn’t recollect his eyes, but I saw flashes of blue lights and I got off and then slept, in spite or because of them.

e-mail? sure, feel free

2003-03-21T22:30:00.000Z

I was going to write more about Helsinki, but I can’t locate my notebook with thoughts in, it’s not lost, but mislaid.

I look a lot at other people’s diaries, in Diaryland, Livejournal, Blogspot. And everyone’s talking about this war. I have nothing new to say about it. I feel like I’m just this stupid girl, playing with her pictures… well, here they are, anyway.

This is almost Soviet. Grimy-idealistic.

Amusing for Americans. Hilarious for English. For different reasons.

Even if the building is not fantastic, the entrance is often impressing.

What sorcery is in this pharmacie?

e-mail? sure, feel free

2003-03-19T22:38:00.000Z

When it was truly sure that we wouldn’t need to work at the weekend, I stopped the drinking. Suddenly, I was thinking of getting out and seeing this little city the next day, my head was clear enough that I could do that. I went to my room and watched the cars and buses and people from the window ‘til the automatic movement in my mind slowed itself.

Next day first item *Inka, *Patty and I went shopping. I know, girl thing. But not for clothes! I took a photo or you wouldn’t believe what they are like:

And that was quite typical. People were wearing the clothes as well. No, really. *Inka told us in Finland you buy scissors. And we did, a little group of us around *Inka who didn’t need to speak in Swedish for us ‘cause the till woman spoke great English (probably better than me, for my shame!). They have name badges which say what languages they speak in flags, and they stretch like medal ribbons on an old soldier’s heart. So, plus my scissors I bought one of these. And many cheeses to be cut with it.

*Inka and me went down to the shore, to see what the sea looked like with ice on it. I’ve seen iced lakes, but never the sea, solid and flat. And *Inka has seen that, but never walked on it, like we did that day. We were a bit scared! But with children all around us on bicycles and their parents walking slowly after them. Saw the poor souls from a sauna, they walked right out, one in a bikini, another in a dressing gown, but gloves also, to dip in the hole in the ice. How do their hearts not stop? The Finns must be strong.

The company bought us our dinner, which was in a Lappish restaurant. We convinced *Patty and *Pablo that one of the dishes was Moomin meat. They never before heard of this, but our faces were straight and they still don’t know our little trick. Now *Patty has bought a book of Moomin stories, and when she reads it to her niece I wonder if she will admit to her that she has eaten the flesh of the endearing creatures who eat pine needles before winter.

To pretend to work a little we made a rehearse of Q+A for Y’s Monday presentation. Soon we just asked silly questions, which Y answered in character. It was pretty funny, right there, then. Then early nights ‘cause we were full of food and tired from the fresh air. Which was good because Sunday was a whole ‘nother day. The hotel room was hot, I slept weird. Also because of the hairdressing convention, whose guests were shrieking in the corridor in the ones and twos. But I didn’t mind. I went back in sleep, trying to dream of grey politicians in town for their election playing with the Wella girls.

There are going to be some pictures. I post too many, especially since my archives are non-working…

e-mail? sure, feel free

2003-03-19T03:18:00.000Z

Sometimes life has a way of putting you in a place you never thought you’d be, in geography, in relation with others, to a different mood…

This last few days was definitely the geographic, in the manner of about 1500 kilometers. Have you had it when someone offers you something and they think they’re asking you a favour, and really it’s a benefit to you? And you take it but try to suppress enthusiasm? It was like that.

So I arrived at work on Friday, and even only nine am, there was some kind of panic, some plans that were made (not by me!) went bad, because of circumstances no-one predicted. I can’t say too much here, because it’s so specific, but an event we were organising in Helsinki, Finland was just about to fall down because some facilities were going to be taken with an election there. I don’t know how that happened – it’s not the first time they had democracy there? *Patty was near hysterical and she’s in normality so calm. So she said…

'…is your passport up to date? And clean?' Like it was a driving permit.

For sure I cabbed it across the post code, grabbed up my identity, spare knicks and stuffs. And my big old camera. You never know, yuh?

*Patty said we were going ‘mob-handed’ – she wasn’t joking. She, *Inka, *Pablo and two others I don’t know so well. Took two taxis to get us to Heathrow.

The moment I like, it’s not that true take off, it’s the rush you feel in your feet when the craft takes the speed, after a zig-zag journey of taxiing. It’s the decision, no going back once it’s moving. It’s just not going to stop at no fucking signal.

I don’t understand how or why the drinking started. *Patty said ‘Let’s get kicked off.’ I was waking to sight of dirty milk and black land from the window, getting closer, she passed back a cute silver flask of alcohol, which I didn’t even taste for the fur in my mouth. Perhaps she was nervous. And wanted to be sure we were still with her. We were all carry-on, so getting to the hotel was quick. We weren’t even loaded at reception. That Radisson is ugly. Any are not?

Some things were arranged in the hotel lobby. I was getting fuzzy, but I said to *Inka: ‘There is nothing for us to do.’ And she nodded. Nothing.

We went on out. It was dark, trams and black snow that looked like tumourous growths of tarmacadam on the flanges of the intersections. I kicked at a pile, then *Pablo and *Inka and the stuff just stuck. It wasn’t even cold, like the thaw in the mountains, but this mutant snow, it was adhered. Anyhow, a few times we kicked it like hooligans. Took to a bar, but the prices were lethal. Back in the hotel we spiked up OJs in the lounge and *Inka said if we were really good she’uld use her Svenska and nose to score for us later.

We should have been at *Patty’s presentation, but she was glad we didn’t. Less pressure for her. Plus which we could none of us keep quiet. Would have ruined her pitch. Was in company of X and Y anyway.

More later. How did it get to be now?

e-mail? sure, feel free

2003-03-13T22:46:00.000Z

I like that my circle of friends form a wide radius. They are in America, Danmark, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Czech Republic. For instance. But sometimes it’s tough. In England I only know *Benny and *Kay. Maybe a new friend in *Inka. I need some more friends nearby. It’s an effort, but I know it’s repaid.

The other thing which I’m in envy of people who always lived in one place: all their previous liaisons are close by. So to many that would be a nightmare. And even for me, who likes to part from significant men as friends, there are several who would make my skin creep to see them again. But there would be advantages. Sometimes there can be a revisitation, just brief, but mutually satisfying. I’ve done that a few times, it’s worked out good most often.

This week I went into my address book. One already wants to visit me. He wants to visit London cheap, for sure. But he won’t insist to sleep on the floor. Another I could invite over. Two I could visit.

But I finally got a date fixed with *Roberto. After how long? A time when I thought he forgot about me, then when I didn’t return to his e-mail, and a kind of misunderstanding. He thought I was rejecting to meet and in refuting it I had to say, no, the opposite, which brought it more open, a good thing. So it’s a little test for me, I’m having discipline. I won’t be making those invitations until I see how this turns out. But maybe *Hal ‘cause he asked. *Roberto and I may not like each other as we did almost last year. But I’m curious. And I won’t give up right off if we don’t click straight away. I never ‘click’ anyway.

That’s been why ‘dating’ doesn’t work for me, either they are not quite right (and I forget always you need grit to make the pearl), or they’re too right and I’m suspicious, or scared to feel them later decline with me, they’ve got further to fall.

Prefer best when I know them from before, as if they were just… around. Or doing the last thing first can be right.

At work has been hell of a busy, and I have to attend tomorrow. Sucks. But I get another day off in next week, and I’m making it Monday. So if it all falls flat and *Roberto appears to be an ass on Saturday, I yet have two full days to look forward to.

e-mail? sure, feel free

2003-03-11T18:21:00.000Z

“…London, like all large cities, resents physical exercise, unless taken with some practical and immediate utilitarian object in view… The rules governing exercise in London are clearly defined. You may run, if you are running after a hat, or an omnibus; you may jump, if you do so with the idea of avoiding a taxi-cab or because you have stepped on a banana skin. But, if you run because you wish to develop your lungs, or jump because jumping is good for your liver, London punishes you with its mockery. It rallies round and points its finger of scorn.”

Something Fresh by P.G. Wodehouse

Wodehouse wrote these words in 1914. Reader from foreign lands, it’s not like that now!

I was waiting for a friend yesterday evening, not far from that evil Barbarican. There was shouting coming from the window on the first floor of the building opposite, a woman yelling. She was barking! As they say.

I was early. My date was late (not a real sex-type date!). Always like that. So as it got darker, the light of the window opposite was strengthening. And the hollering wasn’t getting quieter either. Now I could see shapes through frosted glass. It was some kind of keeping fit class. Line of shapes, as strange as that Greek philosopher’s shadows on the wall in the cave.

You can see this all over town. Up by the stairway from Villiers Street to Charing Cross terminal station, you can see through windows people running on special machines that force them to run. If you hang around and leer in through you can see other people trapped under weights, which they have to lift up a number of times before they can escape. There are many, many other places.

The place I go to do my swimming. You can torture yourself in all kinds of ways. I just go to swim. I plod along quite happily in my lane, on either side there are people going backwards and forwards in the time it takes me to do swim length. I don’t mind, they are very quiet, not like noisy, splashing children.

I know what I like better. Reading my book. When I was a kid I used to read P.G. Wodehouse a lot. I used to imagine what it would be like to move to England and move among his creations. Then I got a bit older and realised it wasn’t like that but would still escape in my imagination. It was a good place to go, when I wasn’t wanting too much excitement, but a lot of diversion. Such as when P was ill.

I was told by that he collaborated with the Nazis. No, not Pa, thank God, Wodehouse. That’s a difficult thing to know.

e-mail? sure, feel free

2003-03-10T00:09:00.000Z

To live each day not as if it were my first.
To live each day not as if it were my last.
To live each day as if I were seeking to provide an alibi in case of wrongful accusation by the authorities.

This thought was aroused by a section I’m in progress of reading, or more correctly, a short story. ‘The Hunters’, by Claire Messud.

“This was […] a time in which I had no life. Or rather, in which I had no life that could be seen. Indeed, some evenings in my Kilburn flat, with the lights off, watching the doll-like neighbours opposite gesticulating or moving from room to room, I felt more than invisible (which to them, most surely, I was); I felt God-like. Days, and more than once, entire weeks, would pass in which I would have nothing more than perfunctory exchanges with minions of various descriptions – clerks and checkout girls and taxi drivers and librarians – and in which I knew that not one of them studied my face, nor even registered its features. Has I been called upon by the police to produce an alibi for one of these solitary days, I could not possibly have done so, because nobody saw me; even if they conversed with me, or pressed change or merchandise into my palms, I was and remain convinced they did not see me.”

There’s much more that I could quote here, but it goes away from my experience. This which she describes, I recognise, a little, even if it’s only true for the space of up to a three days in a length.

Messud writes through a character whose nose is in the air, I hope this is deliberate. I’m not enjoying the book, but it’s sometimes a stimulus.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-03-08T02:32:00.000Z

This morning was waking up with a kind of clarity of thought. That I didn’t have any right, I was thickly hanged over. Looked out across the room, to see *Jules, hey, a bit closer to *Kieran than they were last night when I placed my lucky guests in their sleeping positions. She said she wriggles in the night, but that’s quite some movement, yuh? Who’uld have thunk? *Inka got top-tail with me by reason of her back, and they all were sleeping like children, exhausted from playing. And I felt for a moment very maternal.

Not just do I have a waiting list for staying with me in holiday purposes, but also my co-workers arrive home with me when it gets too late for their transports. Delightful! This previous soiree in aid of the carpet-fitting at the office. We don’t celebrate floor-cover, our lives didn’t get that way yet, but everyone gets the day off today (the manager’s being so cool about it, I get a day off next week to keep me equal) ‘cause our floor of the building is closed.

You see I sneaked a entry in last night – while they all were in the kitchen making us omelettes (that’s named role-reversal!). I wanted to use that picture for a long time and it seemed the time was right. I was drunk… Before this they were in my computer checking out porn. What is it about the drunken and any kind of internet facility. Normal people who would only check their stocks or buy things on ebay? Plus which, I got a little worried when *Kieran started scrolling through my History in Explorer. Hey, my whole identity is available there! But he didn’t get as far as ‘k’, I stopped that at once…

It was a good time, but we were drinking from 17h to 23h, then some here until my jenever ran dry. Yet all of the day my head felt so clear. And this makes no sense, as gin has not done me good recently. It’s a bad friend. I made breakfasts and evicted the people. At lunchtime I was still weak and, strange, feeling very good. Was so active, cleaning up vigorously, then to writing some letters I had put aside for too long and also e-mails. I remade some contacts and feel accomplished.

After that kind of night I like to get back into the world with swimming so made it my mission to find a pool. And it wasn’t so difficult, I had a fear I’uld have to buy gym membership, which two people told already. But the facilities are there if you look. Though I didn’t go today.

But I wasn’t finished to the day yet, so I went to the British Library. As like the Bibliotheque Nationale I was disappointed. I couldn’t see books. Perhaps I’m naïve?

When I visited London as a kid, they were building it. Pa showed me the building site, I think he was disappointed that it wasn’t to be ready for a while. On one of my odysseys a few years ago, I passed by, it was still in progress. Now it’s open, I’m let down, it’s a shame.

Plus I saw in this month’s Wallpaper magazine (too much fashion, I can get that elsewhere, thanks Tyler!) the head library for the Lander of Saxony, two whole pages, architect porn, not a book in sight. It looks like the HQ of a pharmacologicals company. They put all the books under the ground, I guess not to scare anyone. But give thanks ‘cause burying is better than burning. Only a little misprint away from 451.

When I come to a stop, finally, I’ll have a study and the shelves will be crammed, from ceiling to floor. The room will smell musky, and if anyone doesn’t care for it, they don’t have to be in there.

Now I got that off my chest. With books, I’m some ways with a book I just found after searching, searching, searching. ‘Beautiful Losers’ a book by Leonard Cohen (who I mentioned some back). For the longest time I couldn’t find it. When I go into a used book shop it’s on the list in my head. And I found it on a stall beneath the Waterloo Bridge. *Bettina was right, it’s got some very kinky subject to it. Well, I guess Leonard was a pretty horny guy in the middle of the nineteen-sixties. It sure shows on the page. Kind of messy. I like it. Might not want to do it. All of it. At once.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-03-07T01:44:00.000Z

It's got to stop but not right now

2003-03-04T23:52:00.000Z

At work the other day was a conversation about two very English words, antiqued terms, I think. What are the differences between a ‘cad’ and a ‘bounder’? Both are not nice men, considered beyond a pale in polite society. A bounder, we think, is a man who would wear garish clothes and be vulgar in speech. A cad is more active, he may be well-dressed, but leaves a litter of broken-hearted and maybe pregnant ladies behind him. Cads often die in duels, or of opium.

I think the cad sounds fun, but don’t tell. I ‘uld use contraception and he wouldn’t fool me enough to break my heart, still I ‘uld get my piece of him! Just between yee and me.

So of us talking were Danish, DutchFrenchSuisse, Portuguese, only one of us was English, and she didn’t have an idea what we were talking about…

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-02-28T22:52:00.000Z

I have mixed feelings towards my pyjamas. I like them, for sure. Indeed I am very fond of them. But they are a true incitement to slothfulness. If I rise in pyjamas and am not required to be anywhere, they act to confine me indoors, like a harem captive.

Within my little home I needn’t change to street clothes, but when I get the notion to go out, then there are decisions to be made. What’s the weather like? What do I feel like wearing, do I even know? Above all, what garments are clean?

To put on clothes I’d have to first take a shower. Then I’ve got to face that my shins are getting bristly, do I feel skilful enough to use the razor?

But I’m so comfortable in these pjs! They’re so much softer than anything else I can wear. Do I truly need to go out? Just yet? Isn’t it more chic to leave the home in the afternoon?

Plus which, there’s something in being in clothes that were with me through the night. They have my smell, not a nasty one, nor of fake scent and soap, but just of me. Even though I’m me, I can recognise it. So it’s also telling me that home and in my pyjamas is right.

Also I feel so more free. Not as free as naked, but then in no clothes I’m scared of a splash of scald from the espresso kettle, and the sofa cover is too coarse. In addition, depending, I might be a bit careful how I sit. You know, a woman thing. When I was younger it took me the longest time to realise I could leave traces.

Which takes me to, being candid, I can fiddle with myself more easily, I’m kind of more accessible. In clothes I’m more locked away. It’s easy to get distracted a couple of times in a day.

At other times I can sit by my window, not dressed formally, without weirdoes staring up from the street at me, I like to read in the daylight, I think it’s a good way of getting that vitamin that’s in sunlight.

So I don’t think I’ll be making a conversion to baby doll nighties just yet.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-02-27T22:42:00.000Z

On a previous day I was discussing diaries, and what really their purpose was, with *Kay. She said her diary was very important to her in her early teenaged years, because for her that was a troublesome period, with a lot of self doubt. What she appreciated the most was the evidence that a week after pages which said she felt an emotion and could not imagine anything else again ever, she could report feeling the opposite. *Kay said that writing and reading these contradictions were valuable to her, and she said to me the best thing: ‘In one week I was happy, another I was sad, but in the third week I could read back my diary and have instantly wisdom to see it all didn’t matter a damn.’

But I didn’t feel so in agreement with her when she described diaries as in essence adolescent. I don’t think the introspect stopped for me when my hormones settled into place, and I don’t want it to either. It can be absorbing, to think about oneself, and I would feel bad if I was in ignorance of who I am and didn’t enquire. Being doubtful, suspicious, intrigued within our identity is what means we are not automatic. I’m for it.

Yuh, my belly-button’s fascinating to me. So what about it?

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-02-27T01:38:00.000Z

So, I don’t know if I’m telling myself this to make it become true, or if it actually is this way. But I think I’m getting together now. I always thought I was in touch with myself, but the last few months leave me not sure. I didn’t realise ‘til now how I didn’t have a perspective.

I wasn’t quite calm. As if I was alert, twitchy, ready to deal with something. Now I realise it’s just me, here, and I don’t have a burden. I can do, I can be.

I felt real this weekend, just in the company of new friends, nothing especially intense or vivid. And present, part of things. Before I was almost ghostly, perhaps.

This is a contented evening. I’m copying some of my music onto CDs for *Kieran. He’s a somewhat hip guy, it seems, but he has some gaps in his music library, so I’m helping to deepen his knowledge. Young people aren’t enough educated in their mid-teens since a few years ago. How can a 21 year-old have no Velvet Underground? Where is their history? I like that the warmer weather is here, now I take my coffee onto the roof space and talk with the smoker people. Normally *Kieran is hidden on the floor below, where a lot of equipment is kept. He’s too talented for the job they have him do, I think he should leave but who would be my student in 1970s music then? I have a mission to enlighten this man, so he can’t go just yet.

Oh and *Inka told me that once in a while he can be tempted into providing a back rub. The fact that I have lived for two full months without…. just, without, has not a significance in my yearning for a firm touch, from any person (anyway, visually, um… it’s good that back rubbing is done from behind)

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-02-26T02:04:00.000Z

In entry 39 I didn’t quite represent the truth. I guess I woke up a bit with my own volition, but above all it was *Marissa who made me face it. We spoke on the day before. I told her the reason I came to London, and she said, ‘I know’.

Was like being jolted very gently, an almost physical feeling. Like the buzzy weirdness in the moment of déjà vu, perhaps?

‘I knew you weren’t happy, it was something in your emotional life. But as you are *Sophie, you would remove yourself from it. I didn’t worry so much, but I remembered you in my prayers.’

Note that from anyone else I would resent the presumption to pray for me, but *Marissa is not a heavy Christian or similar, but, yes, she prays. I guess her faith is fundamental to her, but she has never suggested it makes her a better person. Or pretends it to give her humility. If all were like that I might not feel so disposed to be secular. Anyway, also she has an extraordinary sense for some people. She once woke up when her younger sister missed her rail connection at the airport, went out, started her car to warm it, and made herself coffee while she waited for her sister to ring her to tell her what she already knew. There are other examples, things she knew where to find, friends long lost she would think of then meet in the street the next day.

So she had the idea, that it was between me and *Jan, that it wasn’t a fault of either of us, that it was pain for both. And she said, ‘You’ve rested a bit now, you’re ready for life again, yes?

I don’t know if it’s meant to be the prophecy that fulfils itself, but yes. Yes.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-02-23T23:50:00.000Z

I’m not just nearly wrong, but really wrong. I’ve been reading a bit more about weblogs and things like them. It seems that what I should have been doing here is putting in lots of links to news items and other sites and doing a kind of commentary on topical matters. What I have done, as you can see, is to do exactly the reverse, with writing as a diary, only about me, and not even always in the present day. But it’s too late to change now.

But I think that it’s what *Marguerite was encouraging me to do when she suggested I make this site. She said it would help my skills with computers and web sites, which is generally understood by those that know me to be poor. So I completely missed the point, which is what I so often do when people try to teach me things.

Which might explain the feeling that I’ve walked into the wrong room, and been here for some time now. No-one said anything yet, I’m too oblivious to feel uncomfortable. The place where I keep this diary as single pages, which is :http://sophiem.diaryland.com/, I only put that up because the Blogspot archives don’t work for me. Still don’t, by the way. Yet it’s where I was meant to be all along. I prefer it in some ways, but this was my first so I’ll just have to do both.

Another place is ‘LiveJournal’, and I’ve been reading a lot of the diaries on there. I’d feel kind of strange recommending any that I found interesting for the words. Well, these did as well, but I was really impressed by the photography.
My Red Self
Plantation Economy
Charlotta

I don’t know if they are professional photographers, who happen to make online diaries, or if they make a living in some other way. One thing I don’t get with the internet, is that a lot of it is, well, yawn…. But then as for instance for the sites I mentioned above, one feels like I got something without paying, that was worth money, yet it was free. This weekend I spent more than £20 (e/$30) on magazines at WHSmith, but I didn’t see images in them of as much quality and provoking of thought as on those three sites.

This weekend I was a lot of time with *Inka and *Bren, her guy, and their kid. They are pretty cool people, so calm and warm. They have a young baby and nothing it does can stress them. Which is also because the child takes following them, is a lot of the time just observing. I would expect to see it with a notebook, perhaps! Not my thing, for sure, but agreeable to meet one as quiet and sweet as this. It was so warm today! *Bren picked a little blossom from a tree for the three others of us each to wear. I’ve got it in a saucer on the fireplace shelf, the little white petals seem so brave and audacious at this time.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-02-20T23:48:00.000Z

This morning in between wakings I dreamed that I was surrounded by my possessions, floating about me, they weren’t fixed. Then the scene changed, I was in a room, I had lost everything. I felt so… relieved. It was all gone and I could lose nothing more. Then I woke, my heart was beating so fast and I had sweated into my pyjamas. Strange beginning, it gave a colour to my morning.

Everyday that I come into work, when I greet *Inka or she greets me it’s the first person to speak says ‘Hey’, but softly, like ‘Hi’, and the other says ‘Hi, hi’. So we do that all the time and then we went to lunch and overheard two people meeting. They did the exact same thing! I said to *Inka, ‘How is that, they’ve stolen our line?’ And she replied to me, ‘They are Danish girls, I thought you lived in Kobenhavn for three months, it’s the most basic thing.’

How did I miss that? And Sophie is the great cultural observer, bah! I wouldn’t know a traditional greeting if it came and tickled my tushie…

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-02-18T22:32:00.000Z

Why do I feel like I’m hiding out? Like I was in some kind of Nederlandse Baader-Meinhof, and now I’m keeping my head down in another Safe European Home. It’s true, when people get trouble they come to Britain, but do I have an excuse to be acting this way as a fugitive?

It’s a form of self-indulgence, I guess, and I can do that. Always remember I have a Latin half, buried good but deep.

But there is another side of the Latin identity – action, anger, involvement, intervention. I felt most especially inert this weekend. The Underground was full of people and the Piccadilly train was missing out stations in a skip-stop pattern and once above ground I looked down a street and saw at the opposite end a wall of people moving slowly. They said it was the biggest demonstration in British history, and despite that I wish hell on George Bush, I was too wrapped up too even properly understand what was happening.

For sure they’ll kill the people and grab the oil, whatever little *Sophie Maartens does on her day off. But it seemed I have said as much this weekend: don’t count me. It’s as if there was an election and I didn’t vote, or something.

I need to be counted. And do things that count. Otherwise I’m nothing.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-02-18T01:18:00.000Z

I cleaned my jewellery today. I don’t do that very often. There isn’t much, it’s mostly silver. Some of it’s more precious than the rest.

A little chain, just big enough for a wrist, given to me by a friend when we left Utrecht. Much later someone told me she cried that I’d gone and I didn’t know. And we lost touch at that time, I never understood.

*Tat’s home-made earrings, the fucked-up seahorse series. Five little amphibians, all twisted, deformed, too ugly to dangle from anyone’s ears but mine. They were even an odd number.

*Juno’s anklet of NYC subway tokens. You really know when you’re wearing it and it’s for certain uncomfortable, besides which I have an allergy to it. It used to be possible to suck the tokens out of the dispensing machines, something to do with air pressure greater than the magnetistic force. Was a popular way to make money for the homeless. So think what they must be like. I washed them, but however… They don’t use them now, but if they did, mine will be worth 12 dollars when they put the tariff up in a few months.

Several items from Moeder which I don’t describe here.

*Allie’s nose stud. I threw mine away, when I realised I wanted my nostril to be whole again (and it is, with a tiny pit. I don’t blow my nose three ways, anyway). But hers was a gift so I kept. No matter how much sterilising liquid and flames I couldn’t bring myself to put it in.

Getting the jewellery was the strange experience. *Jan had packaged it and given it to a friend of ours, who then gave it to someone we’ve neither of us met before (I wish he hadn’t done that, but okay, it got through), who gave it to someone who *Jan knows, but I didn’t recognise. We met last weekend, by the London School of Economics, she was there for an event, I think and squeezed out in a break. I felt I should do something for her, something more than say thanks, but I couldn’t think of it and there wasn’t time.

Leaving it behind was so stupid, relying on friends to bring it, yet alone strangers, recklessness. Though straightaway I e-mailed *Jan about it, he wrote that in a way he hoped it really meant I’uld be back. I didn’t realise he had left some hopes for me to break. Never knew until this year, my capacity to brutally hurt people, without knowing it ‘til later they tell me, or I think back in clarity.

I make ache. I am pain.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-02-15T23:47:00.000Z

When I was a kid, we had in my family a ‘radiogram’. It was an old thing, partly a radio and also a record player, which had turntable of a ridged grey rubber surface. Best was the illuminated tuning scale, with the names of some cities on, giving a soft light. The sound, I mean the background sound, was like the light, a constant sea wash, something between a hiss and a hum, in it there was almost a vibration. Close to the set I could feel it.

Pa had a stereo, Bang and Olufssen, he doted on it. Wouldn’t flinch if I used it, he trusted me. But if I wanted a record, I would put it on in the spare room, on the radiogram, running just a little too slow. Though I couldn’t tell it. More often it was the radio. Specially I like the BBC’s World Service and the faint stations from France, Britain, far Germany. Moeder told me when she was a girl all Dutch radio came from Hilversum. I know much of it still does. The name of the town sounded like the radio sound itself.

The light expired in the panel, and Pa replaced it with a bright one, it was wrong and he saw that, so he searched and found a dimmer bulb and it was just right. When we moved to Geneve, the radiogram was placed in my room. Then moved up with me to the studio. There it also picked up little voices from a cordless phone in another appartement. The belt on the turntable wore through and Pa replaced it, but it ran fast and was never the same. The radio stayed good, it still is, I think.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-02-12T19:53:00.000Z

I said I’d put some photos here from when I was taken to Belgium last summer. Okay, so here is Brussels:

Only Brussels could make landmarks out of a little boy urinating and some metal balls on sticks. Impressive, yuh?

In Brussels the old buildings are falling down. They let this happen to a bar, what society is that?

But also the new buildings are falling down, too.

Even statues feel cold and unloved.

The Fonctionairres are so stupid they had to rename the Gare Leopold for them ‘Luxembourg this way gentlemen…’

All that’s wrong with the city is in this picture.
“Bruxelles cultive l’art sans pareil d’un accueil simple et chaleureux. Grace a l’atmosphere que seuls savant creer les Bruxelleois.” Take a look behind you M. Delors, the buildings are so wrecked they have trees sprouting from them!

Just… abandoned.

Can you imagine taking this wheel for the view?!

I had a prettige vakantie in Brussels, for sure.

This is Liege. The Meuse. I’ll finish my complaints now.

Different bridge, same water. Maastricht. The Maas, natuurlijk.

The wall I mentioned, the houses are up on a high level

The poor bear, who was at first depressed, but I think he’s also embarrassed since I visited him. I don’t know what made him unhappy, but I think it was something to do with this scene in his old bear-ring.

The Antwerpen zoo garden. If I ever have a child, entering here could be my consolation. For the kid, too.

Five minutes later, it was black as night and I wanted to be washed away.

I think that’s about enough photographs. I don’t feel wordy just now.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-02-09T01:07:00.000Z

Was by Lincoln Inn’s Fields today, before meeting someone by the London School of Economics. Saw this on the ground, do you think he’s okay?

There were maybe five other photos scattered, all with the same picture. I was reading previously of a man who disappeared on the last night it snowed here, somewhere in Willsden or Harlesden. *Inka said, the area is sketchy, but people don’t just disappear. London’s being kind of weird and not pleasant just now – not to me, but to people you read about in the news.

I was in the Legal quarter, it’s good, offices that aren’t modern, you can imagine them through the ages. Here’s a shop that sells shirts to lawyers…

But the hands on the mannequins are scary….

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-02-09T00:27:00.000Z

I told *Jan I had to go away for a bit. Had to fight the lie, keep it down, to not say that I was going away on my own, nor to say with a friend. Though in a sense *Dieter was. To talk to, yes.

I thought we’uld go by Thalys from A’dam CS, but it was the SNCB sneltrein from Schipol. I was pissed at that, perhaps I’m a quality train whore. I know I am! Usually I pay for myself and that teaches me what I get if I don’t.

Sometimes I thought it could be enjoyable, sometimes not. On the train, I guess as we crossed into Belgium, he seemed excited, said something like: ‘A push and a rush, and the land is ours, *Sophie.’ In English. He was having an adventure which I didn’t share. Found all sorts of things in it I didn’t like. Couldn’t just go with it. There were several times I nearly turned back. Especially at Berchem, I was so close to leaving the train.

I expected a 4-star in the centre of town, a minute from t’ Grand Place, but it had 2-stars max and was across from Bruxelles Midi, close by the trestle, you heard the trains pushing through Kapelle. Two beds, one room. I didn’t seem to work up the energy to let him know I wasn’t pleased. Was already conflicted that I felt I was behaving as an escort or similar to. In fact, as if I was made of plastic. In some way, I gave up.

My diary helps me here, though the account is intermittent. I wrote loose leaves in cafes and such. Can be a sign that things are awry, that I am trying at least to maintain communication with myself, sure I often write my diary here and there, but sometimes I hide in it.

The first day he had his Business to do, so I was free for most of it. It was hot, not much but seemed hotter. I had a shower and went out. It was a long way to the centre and the walk is through a part of town that’s been forgot. Regretted not getting the pre-tram, but it’s miserable on a sunny day. I took some photographs, maybe I’ll put some in here.

Telephoned to *Berti once I got a phonecard, I didn’t before ‘cause I didn’t really believe I’uld get so far with it. But she wasn’t at work and she lives at Leuven which is far to drop it all to come and see *Sophie at no notice. I only walked about a bit, before it was time to meet with *Dieter.

He had some kind of associate in business with him, I didn’t like that, or being introduced to this guy. The man checked me out, I could tell, oh, look what *Dieter’s got. No manners, he only talked about work, with bad French, and *Dieter didn’t change the subject. Not as if I wanted to take too much interest. The bar had a pinball game, quite a good one.

Something felt sickly right about interrupting *Dieter to demand coins from him for the pinball. I wrapped myself up in it for a while. I guess I see what was behind that musical film ‘Tommy’, you try to get one with the flippers and lights. It distracted me one time that I saw in the glass of the top piece of the machine, they both were watching me while they talked. Then the guy must have left later ‘cause *Dieter was behind me, too close. I ran the last ball and let it bounce a few then trickle down. How vivid I can see that now. Memory’s strange.

We went on to a restaurant. Food was good, I’uld recommend the pate if I could remember the name of the place. Drank a lot of beer and felt bloated. My mood swang, sometimes good, then bad. *Dieter couldn’t work it out, I guess. Neither could I. In the taxi back he sat too close. Felt tense and back in the hotel I thought I might vomit for a time. He picked up that I didn’t want to communicate, we sat each on our beds for a while. The television was on, there was this one strange station, TVBrussel, I think. I think a Vlaamse thing, watch it for thirty minutes and you see the whole show. In one sequence they show you the view from the front of a city tram, for perhaps five minutes of a journey. If the tram is at traffic signals the picture just is static, maybe a dog will cross the tracks in the distance.

Out of silence, *Dieter said. ‘*Sophie, how do you feel about me?’ I didn’t respond to begin, was going to say something, then he said: ‘Why are you here?’ ‘Because you made me the invitation.’ Which was really no answer and we both knew that. Then I went and cleaned my teeth to stop the conversation. I wanted him to feel I didn’t even really notice him, so I took off my skirt like as if I was alone in the room and went to bed in my t-shirt. Noticed he didn’t look at me, or at the TV either, he looked at the floor. I actually felt sympathy for him in a moment then.

He is 49 and has no children. There is a history of depression and he has some debt problems. What I mean is, I was worked up in my own head, but it doesn’t look good for *Dieter either. Summer will soon be over and he’s in a hotel room with a moodish girl half his age who won’t put out to him or even talk. It sucks for everyone, for sure.

Waited ‘til he was asleep and tried to cry but it wouldn’t come and there was just a hard ball of something tied in my chest until I could sleep.

It seemed much better in the morning, I went down real early and found a baker shop and got breakfast for us to make up to him. We were both a lot happier. I showed him the way I walked to the centre, he agreed there was no way this part of town should be run down like it is. He went to his meeting and I made a contact with *Berti, she wanted to come to Bruxelles, so we met that afternoon. She brought her son who is now four. Very serious little boy, and when he says a thing, it always is something you would never really thought of. He almost speaks in poetry. I liked to hear *Berti tell me of her life. She has a good man and a beautiful, thoughtful child, is known in her field at university.

Like I told everyone else, when she asked, *Jan and I, we’re good, no plans for family, but when a time is right, who knows... Customary bullshit, but to see *Berti smile and be happy for me. She doesn’t yet know. I won’t tell it ‘til I write her next.

In the evening I wasn’t antagonising with *Dieter. We had seafood and walked back by the funfair that was along a boulevard, I let him hold my hand.

In the room I wouldn’t let him kiss me. He was confused, but I let the rest happen and his desire was enough to countermand his doubt. Because I didn’t participate, he hesitated, but I said to him not to stop. Because I was wet I guess he thought I was into it, in fact my body almost was, but that’s automatic. With me it might not be a compliment. My body betrays my mind and my mind betrays my rational sense and my integrity is betrayed by all.

Because he was a bit heavy, he moved me up the bed with doing it, so my head banged against the heater, it sounded hollow like in a cartoon. It was done pretty quick and I went to my own bed straight after. Felt almost in a good mood, I think in relief. We had a laugh ‘cause he tried to flush the condom, and it wouldn’t go. ‘*Dieter, did you never have sex before, condoms cannot ever be flushed!’ I think it’s good that it’s so difficult to dispose of them like that, which means they don’t get washed out into the sea and suffocate inquisiting fish.

The next day we went to Liege for his meeting, then together to Maastricht, which was quite as dull as forever. But the talking was pleasant. We walked along the city wall and through some gardens. In a knot of trees up a path there was a sculpture of a bear, I took a picture of it and then felt really just awfully sad. It was on a bench and one could sit by it, which I did and started crying and couldn’t stop. I felt like a baby, ‘cause I didn’t know why I was crying like this and could only think it was the sculpture. *Dieter didn’t know what to say.

Once I got myself together we walked on and the strange thing happened. I don’t know if it’s something in women crying that turns *Dieter on, but we were back by the wall and he looked at me, odd. As if he was fascinated. I was cleaning up the mascara, and my eyes would have been red and sore. Then he kind of took my arm and walked me over to a quieter bit, off the path. You could see the path in both directions, it was a bit secluded, but with houses overlooking.

Then he turned me, to be facing away from him, and grabbed at my knickers, undid his trousers and tried to penetrate me. Wriggled about and told him ‘not without protection’, he tried to penetrate me in the other place and I swore at him, said again, no. I’m always aware that you still need protection that way, plus it’s not something I would do with all men anyway. Though I didn’t say this. Shouldn’t need to explain it.

So he gave up. After getting ‘decent’, we walked on again, like nothing happened, I guess if he had a condom with him I’uld have let him go ahead. But as suddenly as that it probably might hurt. And if I had wanted it, I’uld have got one of mine? I can’t remember if I had that purse with me.

We didn’t eat and I had to get sandwichs from the Albert Heijn at the station. It felt weird to be back in Netherland again. It made me more aware of what I was doing, very conscious. The train back to Liege broke down, or they lost the key to wind it with. There were a pair of cagolles sitting over from us, with their mother, I think one said something to the other about us, perhaps the age difference. But they didn’t seem to laugh. I wanted to say something important to *Dieter, and I know he doesn’t make his voice quiet, hoped they would get off at Bressous, but they didn’t. Then I didn’t bother to say it on the next journey.

This direct from my diary:
Maybe he doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong. Shit, even I don’t know if he has, what rules are there? Even now he’s been gone one hour, I can’t think clear about it. Getting him to go was difficult. I phoned *Jan, as if I was getting off with the thing of using his bill to pay for it, but then got bored, so phoned to *Bernard and got kind of flirty and *D left. Once he went I didn’t need *Bernard any more, another night perhaps. Poor guy wonders why I hung it up so quick. This wine’s getting into my head at last. *D hasn’t had any, why? Maybe he thinks I’ll be drunk when he gets back. This fast, possibly.
It was quite strange to me that *Dieter hardly touched the wine. Weeks later he told me that even a small quantity of alcohol could endanger his performance. By this I realised that if I had relented to his advance on previous occasions, he couldn’t have gone further. Would have been useful to know.
It’s that tram again. In a tunnel, the screen is black for half a minute! What entertainment, Brussel funcity. I should be having advantage of the empty room. I’m too muzzy to read, or to think. Just for ten minutes I need *Jan. For the five and twentieth time, I can’t believe all this.

*Dieter was gone about four hours. I guess I’d had more wine, ‘cause I remember that when we did the sex I thought it was strange that I was more aware than the night before. But I get such adrenalin rush when I have sex with a new man, so it’s normal.

Sour breath, taking no weight on his elbows, eyes very sad, thought he might cry, big belly rubbing against me, sweat between us. Told him to stop and went to piss. Was a long time, then told him to use a new condom, ‘cause the air gets to them. By half an hour after I was asleep.

Next day was Antwerp. He took a photo of me in front of the Zoo Gardens with my camera, had me promise I’uld send it to him. And I did, I feel right about that, even though then we’d split already.

Walking up the main shopping street and it got suddenly dark with clouds and then rained, so hard. We didn’t take cover, but ran through it, shouting and laughing. Later he said he remembered that as the moment of our time together, I wouldn’t phrase it so, but I agree, sure that and several other times were good.

The last day was awful, I couldn’t take much more. My diary doesn’t say how the argument began, but I shouted at him in the street and went off, actually ran some way. Was really fucking angry, most especially with myself. Took the metro thinking if a transit cop booked me for schwarzrijden I’d bite him and get jailed. Got off at Schuman, which is a good place to remember why I hated Bruxelles. Walked back through the empty office quarter, looked in the windows for a reflection, thought I’d see a mad woman, but just me, looking unremarkable. No-one would have known what I felt inside.

It was Belgian National Day, can you believe it? As I got back to the centre there were crowds and planes overhead and I wanted to run. *Dieter wasn’t in the hotel, I left him a note and took my bag. Was glad we weren’t on the Thalys, as I could leave earlier.

When I got back home I was feeling better, already with the feeling ‘well, it was a life experience, now I know myself better’. And *Jan’s parent’s car was in the drive. So had the taxi go to *Gert’s flat. She wasn’t in, but I got in the street door and sat down on her stage (flight?). No-one used the stairs and *Gert didn’t come back. I left when it was getting dark and by then *Jan’s folks had gone.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-02-06T21:40:00.000Z

Above all the thing to know about *Dieter is what I worked out later, naïve that I was. Still I am, could be. That is this: at the time he made his interest clear to me, *Dieter knew somehow I’d been seeing *Vernon, I’d split from *Vernon, I wasn’t happy with *Jan. *Dieter was intelligent, really deep, which interested me about him, and he picked up every little thing. He was really some kind of detective, that guy.

I don’t think I made clear yet that in this time I didn’t fully give up on *Jan. It was a little like using the electrical appliances on ‘ER’: ‘Clear!’ Pow! Geen-Rien-Nothing… To spark him in his head I would make conversations in the subjects he used to love, philosophy, or politics, social issues. Which once aroused a passion in him, debating with him was good, even though he knew more about those things than me, he was wiser than that even. He once said, ‘I can be wrong, maybe I am. That’s exciting.’ I’ve since thought that in things abstract to us, not who’s time it is to do the washing up, but whether the Town House contract their services, or integration policy, whatever, the real purpose in our talking is our sense of doubt. No matter that some people seem opinionated and full of their dogma, they knew inside they could be wrong, it makes them fight harder. I couldn’t ignite *Jan to this anymore.

Plus I tried to talk to him on subjects personal to us, what was our future. You see, for the first time I was willing to make a future with someone. And it was turning into an impasse. *Jan would say: ‘What we have is nice’. That made me want to cry or break things, and I don’t know for which more: that I was unhappy that *Jan could not know it, or that *Jan was content and I could not tolerate it.

Not one time, until the end, the last several weeks, I spoke plainly. What I should have said was something like this:
‘*Jan, I like you a lot, but before the regimen I liked you much more. I want that back and I think together we can make it. You’uld have to trust me, but I give you my word that I’ll do what you need to be helped. If only you give up the pills and become yourself again. I seem to you to be happy, but I’m not. I’m sorry I can’t tolerate how things are. I’m asking much of you, but I don’t know another way.’

I think that would have been clear. If not we could talk some more. Instead I went around the subject and *Jan could not perceive it by my hints.

I can’t write here how I met *Dieter. I wonder how many things I need to cut in this diary? Already I changed all the names, but I did that before in my paper journals. My memory can fill the gaps, I guess. It’s an interesting disciplinary.

So I met *Dieter through my job. He wasn’t a colleague, but he was around some times. I found him as, in a way, not pleasant, but interesting. Very. Stimulating to my mind. We could chat occasionally, but there was almost nothing of the office buurpraatje, ‘small talk’, I think. Straight into subjects of interest we shared. Swapped books a lot, he seemed to read as fast as me. Sometimes it was books we owned, or to say there was a good one, by so and so, we just read in the library. I just read in the library! Only me and a few other people who treated the library as a home and read the books in there, not checking them by the counter, I think he knew that.

Just got a flashback of his smile, it wasn’t a nice one. It got to be that I didn’t want him to smile. Because of this: he once asked me: ‘did you read ‘Madame Bovary’, by Gustave Flaubert?’ ‘Uh, yeah, when I was a teenager.’ He paused then, with that smile, kind of lips back over his teeth. I figured him out later. I shouldn’t think on that too much.

He was clever to begin, invited *Jan and I both to his place for dinner. It was a good evening in a way, but not how I’d hoped. During this time I was careful not to blame myself. But I did think maybe if I could bring *Jan someone fresh and with a good mind it would give him some interest. I worried maybe it was me that had gone stale for him. I really wanted him to argue with *Dieter on some point, back only several months it would have been Clash of the Titans! For sure, what didn’t work was their interaction. I think *Jan liked *Dieter, too. Must have recognised his intelligence, but didn’t seem to connect to him. *Dieter told me later (when I’d confided, feeling there was nothing left to lose) he thought *Jan was not characteristically a talker. If he had known him once!

After we ate it was mainly *Dieter and I talking, while *Jan was reading *Dieter’s artbooks. Didn’t seem appropriate, it’s the kind of thing you do when you know a person better? And are so comfortable in their houise? If you ever wondered who buys those big damn books, it’s *Dieter along with others. In a way the evening was still agreeable, but I wanted *Jan to be more with us, wanted him to benefit. He fell asleep while we talked.

I helped *Dieter to wash up. Took the crockery to the kitchen ‘cause sleeping *Jan was depressing me. While we did that I apologised for him. He said it was okay. Invited me to come over again. It was obviously to be just me. I didn’t exactly reply. I thought about it later, each time I thought about it thereon it was clear, as if he had touched me and I had let him. And afterwards there was, I think the word is, complicity. Sure I was interested, though. But when I woke *Jan to go home, I was careful to kiss him so *Dieter could see.

In the car getting home I was snappish with *Jan. I didn’t want to speak to him at all, but I was afraid of, I think it’s narcolepsy, while he was driving. I wanted him to stay awake. But I made myself sleep in his bed that night, I didn’t want to let myself get alienated from him.

Next time *Dieter invited me to his place, I made an excuse which was kind of awkward, because when I changed my mind I had to ask him to reinstate his invitation. Embarrassing, but that was how it was.

If he had been a university professor he would have been dangerous. A bit ugly, not ageing well, not a good body, but with the brainy bourgeois girls, he could have run among them, fox with the chickens. I don’t think that makes me a stupid kid – I know how it goes most times, just left home and looking for Papa, so that wasn’t me. But just like a girl can make an old man cry, so can a man like him plan his way. And the use was for each other, in truth.

It can be my custom, when doing the wrongest thing, to still make my guilt by implication less. I can let others act, derive my benefit and not feel the responsibility. It wasn’t that way with *Dieter, because to begin I put up a barrier. It held for some while. Not so very long. In other ways I had some good evenings at his place, because he was thought-provoking and very perceptive. Of physical contact I wouldn’t allow it. Each evening, at some point, he would try it, I would refuse, he would accept. I thought it could be ideal. After all, he had good ideas, communicated them well. I think he should have written on them. And he took my own ideas seriously, he weighed them, made it evident that he found them to have truth in them. It wasn’t flattery he gave me, but a kind of validating. Since dropping University, I feel sometimes equipped but without accreditation. *Dieter made that seem less important.

We talked for long and ninety-nine percentage of the time we spent was agreeable. Drank cognac. He had no intention of getting me drunk, I think, but drink was important to him and he needed the companion for it.

On the third evening I saw *Dieter by myself, I let him pay for the expensive taxi home. When I got there I lied to *Jan that I’d been with *Gert. *Dieter asked me next time if I’d come with him on a trip to Belgium he had for business. I made him wait some days, then e-mailed him ‘Yes’. If he would buy the tickets and the hotel rooms. I think that’s pretty clear.

Buh, I have to work tomorrow. I think I preferred the Tuesday holidays.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-02-05T01:48:00.000Z

So this was my day off instead of last Friday and I made the resolution to go to the Museum of London. I thought I should get some education! It didn’t work out so well, I bought a day pass to use the underground, but I forgot that one of the lines doesn’t circulate any more. I had to walk from Holborn, and because my street plan isn’t very good, I went on the wrong main street and arrived at Farringdon instead of St. Paul. But I got good directions from a man at the market there, to the Barbican Centre, which the Museum is part of. This is what it looks like from where I was:

There’s a yellow line on the paving for your feet to follow at Barbican, but it didn’t go the way I wanted. Couldn’t find the Museum. At all. How can a museum of a whole city be so small to hide?

Didn’t like Barbican at all, I’ve got bad associations with places like that. Like a big housing project but with no people, as if everyone died. I won’t go back there again if I can find another way to the museum. There’s an arts centre as well, I probably won’t go there, either.

That made me frustrated when I bought a day card specially to go this far. I figured out the bus for the West End, though. I was going to see a film here:

But I got the timings wrong, so today I was a schmuck on a regular basis. But then, I found the Photographer’s Gallery. Which was on a list of things I wrote, so I can tick an item. There isn’t any permanent collection though. There isn’t one anywhere in Britain, I think. Can that be right? But they had Juergen Teller!

Iris Palmer and Bjork. I hope they don’t mind me linking to their pictures.
Though not some of his best, but there was Yves Saint Laurent at 10X the size of life. Also in another part of the gallery Simon Norfolk who has photographed around Afghanistan, recently.

This was my favourite, they’re large and detailed, you should really see the prints in life. There was also one of a piece of a tank, the track things they move on, in desert, it looked like the spine of a skeleton. I guess there’ll be some more of that soon.

Then I actually did see a film, ‘Man Without a Past’, which *Marguerite recommended me to see. I liked it, it was slow, a little sad, it made me feel cold and forlorn, not for me, for the people in the film. They were ugly, but beautiful too. Earlier today I saw this:

Which I took for *Marguerite to show her. Coincidences, I like them.

Then after that I stayed out for as long as I could, to get the use from my day card, and because I didn’t want to come home. Just went about on the buses, with all the commuters. I felt like I had a secret, they were all going home, I was going nowhere and back.

Now I’m here I’m glad for the warmth. My heel is all grased, because of my new shoes, there was some blood in my sock. The light blue ones are brand new, also. I don’t have sticker plasters, I’ll make something.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-02-02T22:05:00.000Z

Hm, I was meant to go on with the subject of my last post, but I don’t think I can today, with suddenness I am done reminiscing. I tried to look in my last year diary and the pages kind of deflected me. That’s okay for now, but I know it won’t go away. Right now I’m just happy to be me, here, now.

Present day life. I think I drove *Roberto away, by replying to his e-mails so slow and not writing much when I did. I haven’t heard from him and it’s a shame ‘cause I was getting interested in the idea. I’ve a temptation to speed things up, and e-mail him with a date. Why not? He can say no and then? Pfff… I lose nothing.

Now that I am thinking of boys and girls and what they do with each other, I was looking through some of the things I scanned. Check this out:

Doesn’t it just make you feel like a teenager again to look at it? That little bolt of something like memory? Or maybe you are a teenager, and it means nothing to you. I only know what it signifies to me. There’s something both serious and fun I can see.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-02-02T15:54:00.000Z

*Benny sent me a picture from his suburb, so I don’t have to go and find out for myself:

Thanks *Benny. Hope he doesn’t mind it being shown to the world.

I was at work on Friday, I’m swapping it with Tuesday. A few people didn’t bother to get in. There were some stories of horror of how long people had taken in reaching their homes on Thursday night. The bus company was cancelling the buses even though the snow wasn’t really sticking to the ground and they closed all the underground metro that wasn’t underground. Plus it was too cold for the channel trains to run. If terrorists want to attack the UK they better leave it until some time when there’s no weather, ‘cause otherwise no-one would notice. So I didn’t take the 74 line and it’s not as much a long way as I thought. Plus which, if I didn’t walk that way I wouldn’t have seen this, I think was in Pont Street?

Okee, so completely changing the subject, I wanted to carry on with what I was writing about a few days previous. This type of diary is strange, I feel that I can write again what happened to me long before, and it makes more sense. Which I guess was kind of my idea when I began it this way.

The thing with *Vernon. It was real easy to keep all this from *Jan. Perhaps the only thing I could feel bad about at the time was a thing I respected him for: he always knew to give me space, it was important to him I got my own room and other things. There wasn’t any messing with my privacy from him. So I tried to not lie quite. When I went swimming I told him I went swimming and when I went with *Vernon I just told him I was going out. If he asked me any more I would shrug and he wouldn’t ask again. That bit was easy to do, but not to feel good about.

In honesty, it wasn’t good with *Vernon. I didn’t encourage to talk much. in bed it was often times too quick and could be painful, I didn’t try to teach him to do better. I hope his next lover was more educating. In my home, *Jan was still better in talking, and in sex, technically. I don’t know what was important with *Vernon, but I did need the encounters.

So *Vernon started being serious with me, which I warned him from, but still he did so. He would ask me if I loved *Jan, I would answer yes, because it was the easiest way of explaining I wanted still to be with him. Plus *Vernon would ask about sex with *Jan, and again I’uld reply with honesty. Then all the stupid details men ask when they get worked up in jealousy, is he better than me, is his bigger than mine. I’uld say ‘Yes’ and then ‘No’, totally frank. But always more questions, if I’m bigger, how is he better? Oh, please. F’fuck sake. I’uld say it’s my fault for dating a younger guy, but I heard something the same from a man of two times his age, so…. Buh. It was truly tedious for me.

Don’t think he was happy either, so when his college term and internship ended I cut him loose. There was once I thought he would make trouble, since he came to our house. Looking back, it was funny for sure. He was on the front paving and I was talking to him at the threshold. *Vernon was insisting to come in, I told *Jan he was a colleague when I went to the door. Then *Jan was behind me, said ‘come in.’ *Vernon hasn’t seen him before that and as I think I said, *Jan is quite a big guy. Funny how all the love and must have me kind of went away from *Vernon just then, while *Jan thought I was being unfriendly to our guest. Only I in the middle understood it. Crazy moment.

I didn’t see *Vernon again since. But for once I thought it was him in Vlamingstraat, Den Haag. If so he was with a friend, maybe didn’t see me, or just pretended not.

Think I’ll take a break.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-01-28T22:56:00.000Z

Just a few photos. I think I’m too tired just now for commentary. This one is of the City of London,under the arch of Waterloo Bridge

And from the top of the same bridge

These trees, which I saw in Pimlico, were strange.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-01-28T21:53:00.000Z

Sunday

I’ve made a decision, *Ludmilla is having her Sunday Lunch at lunchtime, no matter what. To make that happen I’ve already prepared a lot of it, being as quiet as I can, though I think her sleep is very deep.

It’s true that she snores some, but she’s talented at arriving home quietly. I didn’t hear the door or even her moving about, only when I felt the bed move I was woken (we’re sharing, I forgot to bring the mat for the sleeping bag). I think I said ‘Hi’ and went back to sleep, not even ‘Did you have a nice time?’ I woke up again about 9. I’m an enthusiast for watching people sleep, the way they change a bit, so peaceable. Which is interesting when it’s a normally energetic person! *Ludmilla becomes like a young teenager almost, she looks as if she’s safe somewhere else as well as here. I snuggled to her for a while, like the spoons, for the warm sensation. She smelled of alcohol and cigarettes and perfume and sweat. It wasn’t disagreeable at all. Her shoulder was of scent and clothes wash, lower down her back was more of her. I didn’t sniff her knees, though I wanted to.

Hoping she’s not far hungover. But it wouldn’t be like her, so I don’t think so, whatever she’s had last night. I’ll have her at my table, not to worry. She looks sweet spread out on her tummy. I revenged myself earlier for the pic she took of me in bed on Friday morning, but now she’s lying in another way I might take another.

Monday plus Tuesday

And just as suddenly she was gone. The place seems so empty and silent now without her.

It seems strange to write it, but we didn’t really talk until Sunday. We did before I guess, but not on anything important to either of us. Perhaps ‘cause we didn’t want to, or weren’t ready to. But then I had a connection with my friend and it was a kind of relief, like when you want to hold someone, but you don’t know if they want you close.

About *Ludmilla, it seems I didn’t have to worry. I did worry before , because there was something of instability around her. You have to know that she is the most fixed thing in her life most times, and can deal with things out of kilter when she moves through them. I can’t quite explain it here. But the feel she gave me, that she wasn’t quite held together right, that had a reason, not a bad one, I’m relieved.

*Ludmilla is doing well in business, which is a thing that suits her, I won’t write it out in full here as it’s kind of specific, for Berlin anyway. She makes a lot of money. But she thinks she’s now at a crossroads in her destiny, and that the next thing isn’t clear to her. Shocking to me, she talked of family, not her folks that she hasn’t spoken with since a long time, instead a family she would make for her own. *Ludmilla’s always been so independent, fighting away the men who want instantly to marry her, because they think all she must want is to be a legitimate Deutsche Frau. Now she says she will have to choose carefully, and deliberately. For her this means a partnership that’s permanent, this hasn’t been her way before.

The business can be sold, she says, and she thinks she might go to a university. It seems in contradiction but I believe her that she can study and have children at the same time. I can’t envision it, my half-crazy, half-wise *Ludmilla sitting down to books and paper. She’s too quick! Neither I can see her with a baby in her arm. But the both things together, yes, it’s so fantastic, I can see her dream. I think it can happen and I want it for her very much.

For the future I won’t leave it so long to visit her. The telephone can’t be enough to tell me of her life and where she takes it.

Once our lunch had digested a bit and I could truly move, we went to Camden Town Market and didn’t talk so deeply for a while. Back into the mode of tourist girls, I guess.

The sun on the clouds in the evening was something to see. We were sitting for a while in Regent Park just to watch the colours. We held hands then, not like lovers, like children, if you can understand it.

For dinner *Ludmilla wanted pancakes! What’s a half-Dutch girl to do, everyone wants her pannekoeken… I got a good pan for it now, which I was missing until this weekend. It’s fun to make them, most specially if your guest knows how too, and you take it in turns. Some batter got spilt, oil and cinnamon too, we should have been careful of the hall carpet. But it’s worth it all.

Then we had showers and went to bed super-early (*Ludmilla looks terrific in my pyjamas, how?) and seems it was time to talk about me. Everyone’s asked why I so sudden came to London and almost no-one got an answer. *Kay I gave the elementary version, but I wonder if that was ‘cause I owed it to her for all she’s done? I needed to talk through it properly and *Ludmilla was the right person to be there.

I think I know what I did now. It was a lot of telling people what they wanted to hear to start with, then made it to convince myself. That can’t work, ever. Then when things went wrong, I was caught in it.

It was true to begin, if anyone was the right guy it was *Jan. I thought a bit, before him there was some real average encounters, but it wasn’t for comparison. I tell you, for me he had it. Now I don’t know if what I wanted to make with him would have pulled us apart. I’ll never know ‘cause it went all wrong anyway, his problems, his family.

Whatever, he was good. For the right girl, perhaps one who is patient, and can fit in well, will take time to nurture, he will be, perhaps for ever. I really hope that. She’ll have to deal with the medication though, he won’t be the man I met for the first time. I should feel so bad for the way I dealt with that, kind of selfish in my reaction to it, but his meds took away the exact things in him I wanted him for.

There were times before the pills that I felt something like I can’t describe, I can’t call it love, not as easy as that. But it wasn’t felt by me before.

I don’t even think he needed them, he needed space to be *Jan, a whole person, not a piece of his relations. I should have insisted we go somewhere distant even just moving to Koln or maybe only Eindhoven, there were good jobs for him in both cities. He was shaky, but I know I helped that. Then others, his sick-fuck family, would pick him apart, shove him off his feet again. It was a battle without a truce, poor *Jan between us.

*Jan to me was a wicked smile, eyes lit, he could do, be, anything, hey, ho, let’s go. He was like a rush, with him I changed up a gear, kicking forward suddenly. A hit of airline-type oxygen on a hang-over morning. He was bright and clear and he hurt my eyes and ears. Golden-haired boy, a Botticelli angel grown strong and fallen to be my own lovely Satan. But so fragile and easy to break a bit.

He got so placid, his sharp humour went away. In Spring he was fine to be with, I’uld come home from work and he would pounce on me, pressing in, and no matter what shit the day had been for me, I could always be persuaded, indeed. With the pills that stopped and I couldn’t bear it, before I always knew that he wanted me, the way of his approach, feeling that he must have me. Then it was as if he could, or he could not, and it was much the same to him. Worse is wondering if he only did it ‘cause I wanted. It’s easy to get confused, when a man is erect it’s plain to see that he wants, but what if he doesn’t really, all that is left is his mechanism? It was like that from the first week of treatment, before there were times that I simply couldn’t have refused him he was so ardent and strong, then it was, ah well, if you don’t want, I don’t mind. One time I tested him and became bitter about it. Told him to stop, as if I was too tired and he just said ‘okay’. Then I changed my mind, then changed it back again, and I realised he would just do what I said, indifferent.

After that we still had sex pretty regular, I think ‘cause I couldn’t stand not to. It was a routine, but I couldn’t disrupt it in some way. It was an arrangement that he came into my room in the morning before he went to work. Sometimes I felt like I was using him as an implement to masturbate myself with. Sometimes it was like milking a cow and I don’t know which of us which. Even when I was seeing *Vernon, and *Dieter, I still carried on like that.

Was a real surprise to *Ludmilla, not that I was going with other guys, but that I put up with my situation at home for so long. Because when she first heard I moved in with *Jan for so long, she thought ‘Wow, he must be special, to keep hold of *Sophie like that.’ But I didn’t confide in her then, ‘cause I didn’t even confide in myself. I berate myself now, because I could have done. *Ludmilla has opinions, but she wouldn’t judge, she doesn’t think of me as less now she knows how things were. Sometimes I don’t properly think of how my friends could be for me.

I made her laugh, she said ‘Sorry!’ but still laughed when I told her of *Vernon. Perhaps it was pretty funny too…

Didn’t take so long, once things changed about *Jan, that I was doing things to spend my time out of the house. I watched a lot of movies, went to the swim pool mostly twice per week, hung out with friends who were people who I liked but wouldn’t usually see that much of. Some of the time I would just walk. Too often it was raining and I never seemed to care. Uh-huh, *Sophie’s getting soaked again. I can be tolerant with bad weather, but boredom at home is something awful. Wasn’t enough to go to my room, shut myself up and do things on my own. ‘Cause if I truly had have lived by myself or just with room-mates that would be okay. What I couldn’t take was knowing in my house *Jan was there and not there. Couldn’t leave that thought to rest. Also I was in between thinking I should have more effort to make things work, and knowing in truth it wasn’t my power to do that.

*Vernon was a kind of temporary intern in my office for two days in a week, he also did college in the rest of the time. He was sweet, but I wouldn’t normally have thought of him and now I think of it I realise how deliberating I was. He was shy and I think I liked having a challenge with a reward I might win. *Jan had a curtain which I couldn’t draw to aside, but *Vernon wasn’t doped or anything, he could be brought out. I guess I would have tried anyway, even if not for that, ‘cause no-one else made it their business to speak much to him. Perhaps only because he was much younger and wouldn’t be around for a long time. Like all of them who were stuck in their jobs, in truth most of my colleagues there really sucked.

Won’t tell it all here, but I just about asked him on a date. I kind of took control, I’m not ashamed of it now, but it’s not often my way in normality. *Vernon knew I was with *Jan, but he didn’t say anything. Could tell he was confused, which for me already was a turn-on. I made it really quick, the next evening, or the next but for one. We went to a bar in Am’dam, the type of place I don’t go to usually, big and busy, like a central station. Was flirting with him straight away that we sat down, I think to see him get a little embarrassed. A young guy blushing for you, is there anything like it? I could tell he was scared a bit in a way, but also excited, afterward we kissed in the street and made out some in his car. He was worried for being tested for alcohol by the traffics-politie and we went by secondary roads back to Hoofdorp.

He was interested, we went to Zandvoort on the next weekend, we were on the beach for a while, then went up to a little house of his family further up the coast. At the beach I was wondering if anyone was noticing that he is six years younger than me. That was the most exciting part of it all, I needed the sex, but there was novelty, too. Later I got him to admit he was a virgin. Would usually prefer a guy with experience, but if you’re his first, in some way they’re still forever a virgin to you. I’ve only had three like that added up, but it always seems strongly that way. Tried not let it feel too special, ‘cause it was only meant to be for utility anyway.

So, though I really needed it good, it was cute that he was so bad at it. I mean hopeless. Someone older you’uld lose patience, but with him, inside I felt like ‘Aww…’ We gave up on the condom because he was thumbs and fingers and wouldn’t let me place it on for him. What are they teaching them in Nederlandse schools? Then after he got scared that I’d get pregnant: ‘I think it’s going to be okay *Vernon, ‘cause I’m on the pill, and anyway you got nearly it all on my leg.’ For sure I’m heartless to laugh, but *Ludmilla found that funny, too.

Just now I looked back in my 2002 dagboek and like I thought, I hardly wrote a thing. Only the elements of it. For nearly two months, just the functions, not what I felt about it. It’s similar to an account book. Now I think of it almost in sadness, but also with some happy memory. It wasn’t so long ago.

In a way I was experimenting with myself, too. What would this make me feel about *Jan, would it change? I was really trying a lot, to feel guilt. But I couldn’t. When he had been full of life and wit, then he was resilient, invincible. Only I still would have felt bad about deceiving him. This doped *Jan, who wasn’t anymore my big laughing brute, I didn’t seem to care. I wanted nothing bad to happen to him. Knew for him to find out would hurt him, even through the cotton wad. Still I couldn’t get remorse.

For a time I though the best thing would be to ask him that we could have an open relationship. It’s too difficult though, when only one person will have the motivation to it. Plus most of my relationships ‘til then had been open like that, in some way. Certainly didn’t make a promise of chastity to anyone. But this was mean to be different, where I did things as they were done. So I guess I really was going the way of conventions, by having affairs! The truly obvious course though was to leave him, and you can see I was so far in it that I just wouldn’t accept that yet.

So I carried making it work. Was weird that the sex with *Jan nearly got better because of it. Don’t mean that he was more enthusiastic, but I enjoyed it more. Perhaps was a mental effect, which is, duh, obvious ‘cause having more than one guy around has always been good for me. Or just a sensation thing, kind of physical, that *Vernon was as rough as clumsy, even though diffident and careful in all the other things. Then the next morning with *Jan to begin it I’d wince a little, it reminded me all the way through.

Hell, I'm tired. There's more to write, but later. I'm losing my English. Better put on some photos.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-01-26T00:42:00.000Z

All of this is in one lump, I didn't get to post it in before now:

Thursday Night

I am tired already!

They let me scoot from work rather early, I made up the time already before. Perhaps I was too excited or something, because I got the bus straight away and I was at Waterloo much too early. Around the time that *Ludmilla’s train was beneath the North Sea, I think!

I was waiting in front of the Eurostar part, and then I realised that the arrival place was down a corridor, and just as I came to the right part a figure I didn’t recognise at first was approaching me. Her hair was longer and she had on sunglasses, shrieked my name and hugged me, and I hugged back, but she hugged me hardest. Big kisses on both cheeks and I guess she just applied her lippy in the train, ‘cause she sure applied it to me! Being greeted by *Ludmilla is like a big warm wave falling onto you, it’s nice but you have to get your breath.

The big thing I was pleased for was that her passport was valid and she didn’t get grabbed up by security. Last night I worried on it, she has darker complexion than most German girls and even though there is Schengen a security check could happen on any border. Perhaps at Hannover, or Amsterdam, Brussel, or in British immigration? I had wished she went by plane, so there would just be two checks, but she has a friend in Haarlem to stay with, so I understand it.

I forgot how quick *Ludmilla walks, her legs are so long. She had two bags with her, but she didn’t want to store then yet at home, or even in the station consigne and didn’t let me share them for a minute. In an instant she’s fallen in love with London. When she sees the buildings from Waterloo Bridge: ‘I can’t believe I’m here and it’s all thanks to you *Sophie!’ I’m so touched. Then she grabs a guy passing us and makes him take our picture with St. Paul’s Cathedral behind us. All of the rest of the day was a bit like that.

We went to a pub in this locality, I wanted to persuade her to sit down at last! Got caught up on lots of gossip and news and eventually the bar tender had to make sweeping movements to show that it was time to leave. We each had a lot to tell, as *Ludmilla doesn’t write very well. She says this is because she can’t truly write in any language but Russian. But I think she’s only a talker, not a writer.

First in the English food experience for her I made lamb stew with vegetables. She has a double serving, she’s so slim but she fits it in. I don’t know whether it was good or bad, it tasted okay to me. I’ll have to find an Englishman to tell me if I got it right.

So, she’s asleep now, and snoring a little, so I can type without disturbing. It’s going to be kind of strange to have another person in this room tonight.

Oh, ‘in other news’ (people often say it like that) everybody is happy in Holland. Because the Wicked Witch is Dead, which they wanted, but his works live on, which they also wanted. Politics is so hypocritical. What I wrote some days ago, I’m vindicated.

Saturday

Yesterday was such a very long day. Nearly 24 hours long. The part of it with no sleep in it. But I didn’t feel tired from almost the start of the day until the end, I don’t know how. It started with *Ludmilla appearing in a flash and ended with her singing me to sleep. In between was rather a lot.

So, I woke up to lightning, which was *Ludmilla sitting above me in bed, taking my sleeping photograph. Not my waking up preference, at 7:30! She was saying two things, ‘*Sophie, the sun is up, why aren’t you?’ and also ‘Happy Christmas *Sophie, here’s a present!’

She bought me a new camera. I only happened to mention that the computer camera I had wasn’t very good. And it isn’t even my main camera, which is waiting to be repaired. This is too much of a present! But I like it, I can take better pictures with it. Oh, you’ll see some soon…

I guess I did more sightseeing yesterday than in the last few weeks. It was a whistle-stop tour. *Ludmilla now has I think, a photograph of every famous building in London, most with either me or her in front of it. After lunch in Convent Garden we went from one end of Oxford Street to the other, with a detour to Bond Street. I’m not a super-shopper, but it was fun. Because I’ve never been with someone who bought so much! I’m glad it’s not my business where the money comes from…

I let her buy me one thing only, which was a dress, and I won’t say from which shop, because, no, I just won’t… I can’t write it. After that, if I saw anything I liked I didn’t say a thing, I tell you.

Then at Marble Arch *Ludmilla bought a big suitcase. She will need it.

I made us some snacks and things and then we went out again. *Ludmilla wanted to go to at least three bars, so we did that. Going out on the evening with her, one thinks as if anything can happen, that she might make it happen, or just that she’s there, you know?

Must be something about the two of us together, we were getting checked out a lot. Not just by guys, people seemed to look at us wherever they were, it made me feel special. No-one pointed, but there were glances a bit longer. And *Ludmilla has a way of making me seem not left behind, even though she’s the dazzling one, I can’t explain it. It’s not the ‘reflected glory’, I’m part of it, it’s me too. That looks silly, but there it is.

The first place was large, I think by Piccadilly Circus, with door men even though it’s just a bar. First *Ludmilla had a bottle of beer, then she was excited by the novelty of drinking it in big pints. I had vodkas. When you’re with a Russian! They’re still drinking it with Red Bull sometimes here.

I don’t remember a lot now, we were brought drinks a couple of times, but I tell you, it’s a lousy way to meet guys. There were some complete asses, I think we were in the wrong places. It might have been Friday night, in London a lot of people don’t go home before the evening, they arrive straight from their work. It was funny sometimes, when fools were trying to talk to us *Ludmilla and I sneered at them to each other in German (not very good German from me!). We shook off ones we didn’t like, which was almost all, a nice pair was in a pub on Tottenham Court Street, but they had to go home.

We were pacing ourselves with drinks anyway, as *Ludmilla wanted to get some Es, but this time her ‘radar’ failed her, only coke seemed to be available. Or one girl was trying to sell us K, I’ve never tried it but K seems nothing like E to me, it’s stupid trying to sell it as the same thing.

Things looked better in the club. I didn’t care for the music, but we got into it. The time passed very quick without K blackouts thank you very much. I couldn’t work out the people, too many of the guys were pretty to be straights, but I got touched a few times. Not in the nasty way, kind of huggy. Weird, after the second time it didn’t bother me. Guess they got their xtc somewhere.

For a short while I felt it was somehow the wrong night for me and I was worried that something in my mood then was evident to *Ludmilla. But I don’t think she noticed, sometimes it helps when it’s mostly dark and there’s loud music.

Then I somehow woke up, with only alcohol to influence me. Around the last hour was quite good. I got a guy to chat with and so did *Ludmilla. In fact she did almost straight after me, almost rather like she was waiting? Then when the club closed I felt a bit of guilt, ‘cause I realised my guy talked too much and I didn’t want any more of him. I think *Ludmilla was in the assumption that I was taking mine along but when I didn’t, she dropped hers. So three people went without fun because of *Sophie? I’m not always such a damp blanket, I promise!

The West End is really chaos at the weekend nights. So crowded, and lots of people with private cars that say they’re taxis. There are rickshaws as well, they look like fun. We got the N-bus home, though.

It was odd, I felt pretty wired, kind of nervy. I couldn’t sleep and *Ludmilla sang to me. She has a nice voice, and she told me that I was sleeping before she finished her song.

Today I forced, I forced *Ludmilla to sit down to breakfast before we went out. It was fully English and to prove it my flat now smells like a proper little London café. You can probably smell it from there! Fried eggs, sausages, bacon, black pudding, button mushrooms…

Then I took her down to the River, up to Notting Hill, down to Kensington, then Kings Road, more shopping! I think *Ludmilla will fill her new suitcase easily.

So, she’s out now, she pleaded with me a bit to come with her, with flattery that I would improve the evening. But I need to sleep, or even just rest! And I don’t have the energy to meet new people, even though I would be interested to know her friends. Pity, but now this quiet is bliss.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-01-22T21:29:00.000Z

Broke the seal on my jenever stash last night, about the time the evening was trying to end. Mixed it with bitter lemon, one to two, no ice. Watched the late evening people, the tired office people, or those who must have stopped by the bar before home. The tourists from the nasty hotels on Cromwell Road, getting back from a cheap meal somewhere. The people from somewhere a bit East who live in what must have been hotels but I guess aren’t any more. They sit on their steps smoking.

The bars closed, I wanted to go out, it was raining, I took some jenever and lemon with me in a mineral water bottle. Following the main roads, tracing around in a circle, I walked for more than an hour, being disappointed that I recognise so much already, but the memory is dead, it’s a cell without any charge. I thought that then. Now I don’t know what at all I meant by that.

When I got home I drank water, broke a glass in the sink. I’m not usually so clumsy.

At work today I talked with *Pablo, he had read something about the Fortuyn guy, I spent the mostest time back in Netherland avoiding conversations about LPF and such, it just bores me. They would say things almost like ‘But *Sophie, now politics are exciting!’ As if that was the important thing. Fortuyn just wandered in from some game show and he didn’t wander out again. Now we’ve got our own little Diana cult, and a leader who looks like Bill Gates but with yet less charisma. If that’s what you wanted. If Netherland politics needed a heart shock machine, I guess it was already dead. With flowers floating on the Nieuwe Maas and the Ijsselmeer to remember it by. Don’t talk to me about politics. About politics I spit bile and blood, and if I lose the argument I don’t care a damn.

Though I tried for *Pablo. In some ways he is okay, but a bit insufferable for always being right. I explained the differences between the FN and the LPF as much as I understood. *Inka joined in on the Dansk Folkeparti (did I spell it right?). She says a fascist coup in Denmark would be led by market gardeners. No-one knew anything about the English right-wing. Soon *Pablo was confused. I respected that just for once he didn’t try to end the conversation with his conclusion. So that right-wing polititcs has one use, anyway, it’s so incoherent, *Pablo admits defeat. What next, he will think out his arguments before he presents them as correct?

*Patty brought in brownies for everyone, she explained the mix was left over from the weekend and she didn’t want to waste it. But we all think there was an essencial ingredient left out which the people at her party got and we didn’t. Sometimes *Patty’s got that vague way of her.

With the mind on cooking, I’ll make *Ludmilla some British dishes when she comes to stay, that should slow her down! Most of it’s easy, it seems, just components. And breakfasts to send you to the heart arrest ward!

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-01-21T19:58:00.000Z

I don’t know how to be a coquette. I couldn’t even begin. I’uld need a lot of lessons. But I don’t even see the point, how long is life, 70 years? Of which we have from that merely 30 to enjoy in a certain way. It’s an enjoyment that’s important to me, so I won’t waste that time. I’ll be old and dry before I tease and play the fickle one.

Except for it makes things difficult when for very good reasons I can’t make an initial decision right away. This is a rare occurrence, I don’t experience it.

Last night I had a lovely meal at *Kay’s. She made her special cheese lasagne, that is just many layers of cheese sauces and somehow should not be achievable, yet it is. No, believe me, you will not be looking in disappointment for the meat! Incredible.

I wanted to talk to her about *Roberto, to ask her if she would make the research for me. But her boyfriend (*Roland, I think that fits) was there, during the meal. Then afterward he cleared up for us, and went to their room, but still I felt I couldn’t raise the subject of anything during that party. Perhaps it was worse that *Roland seems to be a nice man. *Kay as she is will be attracted to relationships with nice men, then chew herself up in a kind of yearning and distress that she prefers men who are not nice in that way.

Also I thought that by inviting me to dinner in her place she configured it so that we would not talk about her relationship at all. Before we always talked about these things. Except for last night. I don’t know what to think, and I’m concerned greater about that than the *Roberto situation, of which I was being too cautious anyway. Not all my friends and I share the same things between us, but it makes me disoriented when it changes like this.

So I was writing at the commencement, I’ve been playing *Roberto along a little. I was mysterious in my reply to his e-mail, putting him off for that weekend. Then we have had one more exchange in which I neither encourage nor repel him. Not my style. I’m making time. But I’m now quite certain he wants to see me. Plus I kind of want to see him, actually a lot, because in memory I’ve become attracted to him. I’m sure this is not only because that the only person I’ve had sex with in one whole calendar month (as is this evening, at about 22:30 GMT – 21:30 it was there) is me, in my way. Or also because, he is rather cute, and a bit intense and that combination is exciting. Maybe I’ll meet with him again, I won’t be buzzed with alcohol and dancing, and he won’t seem so good. But I have to know.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-01-20T02:07:00.000Z

Heavy. It’s cyclical. Used to it by now.

I replied to *Jan’s sister. It was a short reply, not curt, but she now surely knows what I only hinted at before. What she would have understood if she had any perception. I didn’t try to settle scores.

It’s a shame. What a shame. Buh.

Next weekend *Ludmilla will visit me! I’m still a little worried about her naturalisation status in Germany and whether she will really be able to get here. Of to get back! When she emigrated from the Ukraine not everything was written on her forms that should have been. I think the UK immigration police are on high alert right now, though she doesn’t originate from Chechnya or I’d tell her to avoid the risk. So it’s a worry for me, but apparently not so for her. She’s so confident. That’s her quality I think.

But otherwise I would not know this glamorous, funny, intelligent, wonderful person! How to describe *Ludmilla? She is tall, maybe 180cm? Slender, glossy dark hair in a Louise Brooks kind of style, too beautiful, a wind storm, but such a pleasurable one to be acquainted with. I like her, in case you didn’t already get the idea. She’s going to wear me out! I haven’t seen her for nearly two years.

She’s making her way to me overland, a long itinerary by train. Berlin to Am’dam, Am’dam to Lille and then the tunnel. I’m flattered. Though she wants to see London too, I know!

I’ve been wasting a lot of time these last few days and doing that happily. Like today, I just went to the papers shop in my pajamas and camel coat and spent the rest of the day loafing or on the telephone. Took a long time to cook just a little lunch. It was good. Day before I went out for sometime, here and there, without aim. I’m restless.

Pictures for today, all mine. I had my camera with me all day, only remembered it on the journey home. Some days I’m certain I only look at my feet.

I need a buzz, some kind of experience to get me up, get me off.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-01-17T22:14:00.000Z

"Oh, you are really such a pretty one…”
If a guy said that to you, wouldn’t you just say “yeech!”? For sure.

But when it’s Leonard Cohen singing it. That’s different altogether. What I would give to be in the right place at the right time, a Beatnik chick in New York City. It would have been exciting and painful and good.

In some liner notes he says: “I began this on Aylmer Street in Montreal and finished it a year or so later at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. I didn’t think I was saying goodbye but I guess I was. She gave me many songs, and she has given songs to others too. She is a Muse. A lot of people I know think that there is nothing more important than making a song. Fortunately, this belief arises infrequently in their conversation.”

Today I went on a little winkel-zelgpartij (an orgy of shopping, no typical Dutch person would ever admit to doing this of course). I bought a lot of basics, now I’m in the same island as Marks and Spencer, but also these! (this is not me posing here I confess)

So now all the girl has to do is get a date to wear them to. I think something like that might be in my future.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-01-15T01:25:00.000Z

This is about the time that my old paper diary would be brought out, when it was late at night and I couldn’t sleep, for thoughts that were making me full of energy and restlessness. I’ve been thinking about all kinds of things, but mostly about how it was for me just before I came here. You see, today I got an e-mail from *Jan’s sister. It wasn’t a nice e-mail.

I don’t think I better read e-mails at work anymore, if I don’t know what’s probably in them. I had to wait ‘til lunchtime, holding in some anger and distress.

She wrote it me in English. That’s her way of making a barrier between us. That’s okay, I want us to be different. She (sorry I can’t make a name for her) wrote “Now you should be satisfied. I think his heart is all torn and he’s not like my brother anymore. It was always about you, what is right for you and when everyone wouldn’t play your game you ran away. I want you to know that you left some mess behind. Now me and Mom and Dad have to clear it up, thanks, its worth it to be rid of you.”

There’s more but it’s not coherent. It’s all bullshit, but the next bit doesn’t make sense anyway. Too crappy to paste in here.

It gets me so mad, *Jan’s family have always picked at his confidence and brought him down. When he was feeling good they predicted things would be bad for him again later, predicted it ‘til they made it true.

I tried so much to fit with them, at first when they told me about *Jan’s ‘problems’, I swallowed it all, but then I quickly learnt the truth about it. Then I disagreed with them. From that time forward, I was ‘Trouble’ for *Jan. But they weren’t always arguing with me, instead they said things to us when the other wasn’t there.

They’re still fucking with my head and they’re surely fucking with *Jan’s.

I can’t get it out of my mind into the keyboard. Wish I still had the pencil and notebook now.

Thinking of all the time they stole, weekend lunchtimes, so long, when will they go? Sitting with the television, knowing they’re getting so comfortable they could stay all day. I can do nothing but really grit my teeth ‘til I get a headache. Because I can’t even go up to my room, because then they comment. ‘*Sophie’s room.’, she has to have her own room. Anti-social *Sophie. ‘Family and togetherness is important to us.’ Because that’s their power. They’ve made it sick and suffocating. They stain everything.

I went twice with his sister to Utrecht, because she was trying to bond with me, and understand me, oh man. So we go shopping? And she doesn’t know why I seem to like to stay within the Hoog Catherijne when the shops are so crappy and she thinks I set myself out to be of high quality. I wouldn’t have to spend hours in a fucking shops center, but when I’m out on the streets with her I realise she’s making a shitty experience out of a city I love, and I won’t have her make a place unhappy and with unpleasant association for me. So all I can do is stay in the part of it I liked least. Meanwhile, plus back at home *Jan’s father would be using his psycho-babbel on him and making him insecure and nervous for when I return. That’s a fine father for you, who makes his son afraid of his own girlfriend.

It’s so bad and I know I didn’t handle it right, but I didn’t know what to do that would be right. It’s over now for me, but *Jan, I don’t know what will happen with him.

I don’t think I can type more. Don’t think I’ll sleep yet either.

So this is my diary now. There’s some salt water on the touchpad, same as on the page sometimes. I guess I christened it, yeah?

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-01-13T21:33:00.000Z

I volunteered myself to pick up some documents from another part of town today. It was just a few stations along, but I was glad to get out when it was still bright weather. I wasn’t brave enough to use the bus as I don’t know the lines so well yet, so I went by the tube. The District (Green) line is much more like the Metro than the Piccadilly (darker Blue) line. I’m trusting the doors to open without a handle now. I had a ration of just one photo!

I am sure that *Inka does phone sex work when she speaks on the telephone in Danish. Dominatrix style, very strict and harsh. Because in English she speaks so softly and a little hesitant. Her partner doesn’t know any Danish except to say hello and basic things. I think some Vikings are paying 5DKr per minute on credit card for this. My part of the office gets it for free.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-01-12T23:13:00.000Z

I went to see *Benny this weekend. He lives out of town in a lovely house that I don’t know how he bought. There’s a lot about Benny I don’t know. He drove me about to all his favourite places and made me dinner last night. He has changed a little. Of the better, he is quieter, but more thoughtful. His thoughts are interesting. He’s retraining in aromatherapy, for one thing. He makes fantastic risotto. There is still no-one special in his life, I had temptation to agree when he said his last man was useless, but I didn’t, so often people are back together aren’t they? And he still calls me ‘mijn sletje’!

Bad boy, he bought me a Christmas present, does no-one hear me, I don’t do Christmas? A silk scarf, the design makes me look very refined. A fraud! I mustn’t wear it with anything scratchy.

Best thing he gave me was his bath, I filled it very hot and full of bubbles and he brought me champagne and I was like a starlet! We talked until 1 a.m., it was strange to be a little drunk and in a bath. Then he sent me to bed in a room with a wooden African statue that stared at me all night, he said it was to watch over me. In the morning, salmon and scrambled eggs!

It’s been cold here, crisp, I like it.

*Benny drove me back into the centre, we went through Hampstead and stopped by a big pond that I guess could nearly be a skate rink.

I caught a different bus home, a number 9. Passing by Piccadilly Circus I saw a young Chinese man who was wearing an advertising board for a pizza restaurant. He was talking to an Englishman with a souvenir stall, and gave something to him. The stall-owner flapped his arms a little, smiling, as to say ‘Whaddo I do with this?’. Then took it, it was a portable phone, he held it up in front of him, facing the Chinese guy. Then gave it back to him. He was taking a picture with that phone. I wonder what his friends will make of it, a picture of their friend sent to them, with a pizza sign around his neck. All this happened in the moments during a red traffic light. I like London.

Before, I spent too much time trying to achieve a National Insurance Number. Already I pay tax, and also ‘NI’, but they make it so difficult. A quick poll in my office showed that many visiting workers have problems. I don’t have time for this.

On Friday, from *Roberto ‘What are you doing this weekend’? Is this an Englishman’s method of asking a girl if he can meet her? Or is he just chatting about what that girl does at weekends? I’ll delay a reply to him, I’m pretending I didn’t get it yet.

I have to check out first through *Kay what he’s like. This is complicated, I did not mention to her that I spoke to him at the party because for that time she was trysting with some man. In normality we would afterwards compare our notes, but now she’s in her long term relationship and I know it’s not quite right, but I don’t know what the situation is with that. She doesn’t speak of it fully. So for me it’s difficult to speak of an encounter being concurrent to one of her own. Now I think I got a reason so I’ll take a breath and ring her.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-01-10T22:28:00.000Z

Threw my bad fortune/Off the top of/A tall building/But I’d rather have done it with you
Your boy’s smile/Five in the morning/Looked into your eyes/And I was really in love
In Chinatown/Hungover/You showed me/Just what I could do.
Good Fortune by PJ Harvey

I wasn’t in love, but the rest was true for me. These photos are by David Bradford, who is a New York taxi driver and just takes his pictures from his cab when he sees them. All black and white, they evoke. Just like Polly Jean.

No, it wasn’t ever Chinatown either. I think Morningside Heights was the best. Waiting in the square at Columbia University, for someone who had a free afternoon and he was going to give that free thing to me. Maybe I will crack open those diaries.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-01-09T21:37:00.000Z

Am I doing this wrong? I still think of this as a diary. What’s a ‘weblog’ anyway? I read somewhere that it was a record of what a person found on the internet on a certain day. But I don’t see that really. Can someone provide me with a definition? I see all sorts of things which aren’t like mine. Some of my diaries were scrapbooks, too. Specially when I was a kid. I guess I’m making this page a scrapbook (more about that later!), but I miss the gum and crinkle-cut scissors. I feel like I’m faking again. And what are these surveys? ‘What flavour Pringles are you?’ Please. Not me.

I found out what was in the two courier cartons on Tuesday. Magazines! All my magazines that were making a pillar in the attic space and *Jan was stressing about the floor breaking through. I never thought to ask him to leave them for the waste paper collection. I had pretty much most things organised but I missed a few things, I suppose. What a sweetie, the despatch must have cost a lot, I must try to pay him back. Now I have to take them all to the recycle centre, I don’t think the municipality of Kensington and Chelsea make a collection service.

Ideas come best to me when I’m drinking my evening tea. This idea is to have the benefit of my old magazines and still have space to walk in my apartment. I will scan into my computer all the pieces that I like and then throw the paper away. Then it will take up no space at all. And I’ll be including some more pictures here. That’s my new scrapbook!

One of my own now though. I saw this a while back, in a gallery window near Berkeley (pronounced Barclay!) Square.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-01-08T22:18:00.000Z

Work was dull today. But the snow was good in the morning. At approximately ten-thirty it was wild. We all had our noses pressed to the windows! At lunchtime I just had to find a park where the stuff wasn’t getting trodden away by feet. When I got there bunches of people from offices were there throwing snow at each other and making snowdolls. It was crazy. I like the English! A little snow festival. Perhaps I should have taken my colleagues with me, that would have been a good way of getting to know them, a snow fight. Um!

I had my camera with me. Of course.

I didn’t realise I was so close to Westminster. I guess I didn’t walk that way before today.

*Patsy was busy again, didn’t have time to allocate to me new work. I looked around on the internet a bit, checked my e-mail. Another from *Roberto. He’s interested, I think. He’s not at all scary without his eyes. You know what I mean! I don’t think definitely not. Possibly.

But when I think about that party, heee… I think above all of dancing with that two guys. And the other one a bit before. If only I wasn’t a little drunk on that night. My memory could have more. So then I wouldn’t have done it perhaps? I don’t know. I felt like letting go again. I remember trying to get into the timing of the guy behind me, because he had the most of him against me and it was almost distracting from what the front man was doing, which was in a way more direct with his pressing me. When they were swapping places around me *Kay met with my eyes and formed a happy ‘shocked’ face. She’s seen me do similar, other times. With front guy behind he wasn’t as sympathetic dancer, but his fingers were in my skirt waist for a moment to the top of my hair. After that I could have exploded. Wonder what would have happened if had not needed to leave with *Kay? Interesting thoughts.

I did all this thinking I’ve just told here, at work and wished for the room to be empty. I went to the WC, but it’s not a good environment, I gave it up. Saved it for later, but it wasn’t the same. Even when it’s done for myself I can kind of miss the moment.

I spent the longest time last night, looking at other people’s online journals. I never thought there would be so many. *Marguerite, who gave me the idea to do my diary this way, says she could read different ones for hours and never get bored. There are so many, she’ll never find mine. She would be bored anyway! But I wonder how she meant it. Anyway after that long time in front of the screen I didn’t feel like making an entry. I didn’t write every day in my physical diary either.

I better go now.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-01-06T21:37:00.000Z

My first day on the new job. It seems okay. They didn’t sack me yet. I’m placed at a desk by the window, but the view ain’t a vista. Some other offices across a courtyard. Because of the tinting treatment on the glass of our windows we can see out better than our neighbours can see in. But there’s nothing going on, there are posters and stuff in our offices and none in theirs. They look boring people, extras in an office-movie.

I spoke a little with two of my co-workers. *Inka sits opposite to me, she has a laughing round face and a lot of silver jewellery. She’s a Danske pige, so already we got a Schelswig-Holstein type of rivalry thing going, I like her. *Inka just had a baby not long ago and she got her man to put him on the web cam of their home pc so I could see in real time, that was funny. Looks like her even at a few months. My baas is *Patsy (as in Peppermint, you know of the Charlie Brown and Snoopy cartoons?) and even if she isn’t always as nice and friendly as she was today, I make her my role model for learning Estuary English.

My desktop has a pc (I was hoping for a Mac, which I never had, shame, maybe next job) with internet access. Fast, too. I don’t have a login name, *Inka says it’s okay to look at e-mail and surf for fun, but have to clear the cache afterwards. I had to confess I didn’t know how! *Sophie has good IT skills, oh, right! I pretty soon run out of things to do though, because *Patty didn’t have time to show me the next task.

I had another e-mail from the courier company which was bugging me, I even phoned them up when I got home (not ready to use the office phone yet for personal items, though everyone does). It’s definitely for me, *Jan is the sender. I’m intrigued, it might have been a letter, but there are two pieces. Two letters?

I went back and added a pic from a van Beirendonck fashion shooting, to go with my entry from a week back. Seems longer.

Plus here’s another, isn’t this dress fantastic? From a Vivienne Westwood collection, 1982, apparently. Also from D+C mag.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-01-05T19:38:00.000Z

This template has been altered a little, but it probably doesn’t show too well. It’s an objective for me to learn all about HTML tags and codes, then I can make simple websites. I also want to make this page more interesting to look at.

Hmm. I feel like an interloper doing this. Other journals have lots of links to other diaries, it’s like a big community, but I don’t seem to share things in common with them. When I do things to make this page more attractive I think I’m playing along, almost so as not to offend the others. I’m being insincere? I don’t know.

Since looking at other pages I also see that some people have pages that their friends know about, and some don’t. One even said ‘If you know me in real life and access this page, please tell me.’ Would you? No, nor would I! Maybe if a good friend I would try. For others I would probably read it right through. I know for sure I wouldn’t tell anyone I know about this diary. Openness is important to me, but there is a limit to what one can tell a friend. Strangers, though, that’s different. When a stranger becomes a friend, you gain. But as well, you lose.

First today was a long time getting the bathroom how I like it. I guess I should buy a new shower curtain. Did you see the film ‘Psycho?’. My shower curtain auditioned for that film and really perfomed the most but the casting man said ‘No’, so it came here, damaged in the experience. I’ve fixed it up, but it’s falling back and then the floor gets wet. Plus I removed a lot of limestain from the taps, the water here is good to drink, but you wouldn’t believe how it stains.

Then I caught my local bus line to the other terminus this time. From there I walked with my map to the British Museum. That place is incredible, I did one room and my brain was full. It’s free, so I can go as many times as I like. You bet I will. Here are some photographs from my journey.

I saw this grey couple in a tool shop window. They looked so lonely and crestfallen to be there in among the drills and things. I hope they go to a good home. Worst would be if only one was purchased and the other left behind. Stop, I’ve nearly got tears in my eyes!

This was a sign on a coffee shop close by to the BBC building. It looks so gay.

There were some good statues on the BBC edifice, but these are very like to them, and were on the front of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.

The Great Court is in the British Museum, but looks as though it is outside. So I was looking in this window from the top of middle section. I don’t know what the exhibit was.

This is one of the Pacific Island statues, which were based upon the gods which appeared to the islanders. It was always destined to watch over tourists having their tea and Penguin biscuits. Apparently.

Christmas is over. I saw more trees today, and then this poor little bauble.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-01-04T19:53:00.000Z

It’s confirmed then, I don’t have to be pimped by Randstad, or trot out of the Reed stable. I don’t have to have a thing to do with any uitzendbureau. *Kay, again – what did I do to deserve all this? Thanks to her I have a job to go to on Monday – it’s only for four days of the week but I should have enough for food and rental. It is both boring, and too characteristic to write of here. But it’s work. So I don’t need to be putting my number in telephone kiosks just now yet.

You know, I just realised, I’m getting mostly so sober and adult in this new city, but if I was only here for a week I’uld be rushing around doing everything that could be fit in. As I am now I’ve barely got started. I’m adjusting. So from this morning, now I know where my next meals will come from I’ve been doing more things. I’ve been too introspective. Yes, I did say that!

How is your patience? How are your eyes? Are you feeling visual. Okay…

I wanted to walk into town, the sunlight was upon me again, no bus for me, definitely no underground! And I pass a big house that I should read about one day, it’s made to a Michelin theme. Yes, that’s right, tyres and big old Bibendum. When I get my good camera fixed I’ll take some better photos, but for now here is just one of the tile plates on the wall:

And a motif of ironwork perhaps, adjacent. There is a café and through the window below a guy was winking and beckoning me in when I took the picture. Uh-uh, maybe another day.

This didn’t come out too good, you had to see it. You had to be there. It looked so sad tethered to a street lamp on Brompton Road.

If I had my camera all the time, and photographed every one… there would be many more of these. Poor Christmas Tree, it’s dressed up and made a fuss of and all the family tell it it’s so pretty. Then before it even loses its green, this happens. English people need to learn respect for their forest brethren. Or at least acquire wood-burning stoves.

I’ve seen a few of these. It has a sign saying it sells tea, but I think that was a joke? Does anyone have any ideas?

I’ll tell about the little Byron exposition I went to another time, but when I came out of the National Portrait Gallery, to get my underground train home (I was tired!) I saw this. Now you may take it for granted, but in England a sunset is extraordinary. Because the sun never rises first.

e-mail? sure, feel free.

2003-01-03T22:37:00.000Z

In a package in the middle of the box were my photographs, and already I’m deep in the memory zone, seeing all the people I knew, some I’d forgotten, some I remembered at once. Those I can’t share, the places I can. I’m deferring, putting it off, reading the diaries. So I’ll just play with my scanner for a while…

e-mail? sure, feel free

2003-01-03T22:36:00.000Z

The carton is big, I knew it would be, but larger still than that. How I was fretting these last few days, that something would happen to them, they would fall out of the plane into the North Sea, they would get damaged in loading and pages of me would be dispersed all over Schipol. You see I’d never travelled without them before. And I won’t again, it’s just too, too stressing.

I had to collect it, I wanted to be with it as soon as it is in the country, it was arranged to arrive at the courier’s office. I needed to wait until ten a.m., and then I took it home in a taxi. The carton looked well sealed, I’m taking a deep breath and also having a coffee. Walking there (I found my way first time!) I was in the sunshine and that helped drive away the clouds of worry.

Okay, it’s all complete. The collection was not in order before, I think *Jan must have read it in order. I told him to read the time since we met and then as much as he needed of before then. I guess he read it all. He wanted to understand. I think now he does. So maybe if I need them I will understand too. He doesn’t hate me, that’s good. There was a flicker in my mind that he’ll become angered, maybe destroy it all. Now I feel really bad for the thought, that’s not *Jan. His parool should have been enough for me. He says in his note that now he has done this thing that he thinks we’ll never be close again. I think he’s right, he knows too much about me for either of us to be comfortable with. Yes, it was worthwhile.

Some of it is in school designed exercise books, or loose leaf A4 paper, or in packets, or big desk diaries made for the purpose, or kid scrapbooks in which I wrote on the rough paper. Plus a lot of memento things. *Jan has taken good care I see, nothing is separated, everything is in order, even the things with sticking tape that doesn’t adhere any more.

Should I read backwards or forwards? The books and folders start at 1992. When I first started needing to write, when the first complications set in. If I believed in God I’d ask him now to give me strength. This is not a good time to be an atheist.

e-mail? sure, feel free