Batakliev's Bloc

Interlude

2011-12-17T09:43:00.001+01:00

Starved for rest, the body was waking up abruptly, effortfully. The hourly installments of sleep had been consumed in disbelief. Now the muscles were twitching.
What's next? How were the rhythm, the pulsations, the projections of the semi-awake going to relate to the new day?

His eyes wandered to the edge of the kitchen sink and focused on a plastic box containing three lychees. It occurred to him that when peeled off, the lychee resembled the head of an aroused penis. He liked lychees. Yet, he knew nothing about penises.
The tip of her erect tail gently quivering, Her Majesty Luz Divina entered the stage. She looked at him with her fathomless feline eyes, then looked at the lychees and walked away.

London love affair

2011-12-08T09:04:00.003+01:00

I was sitting on my staircase eating supermarket Greek salad (€ 2,95, feta, lettuce, cherry tomatoes and mayo dressing). My travel bag was gaping wide open. Books, cables, t-shirts and disembodied tube tickets were scattered all over the place and I was waiting for the locksmith to come and let me in. As I was swallowing another eroded feta cube, half dressed in mucousey yellow substance, I realised I had fallen in love. I had fallen in love with London. And this is where I had left my house keys, neatly tucked into a drawer in a cute little flat in the West End.

Big cities cause big gaps between people. You may be very special but I'm not coming to see you after the last tube has gone, I read between the lines of random best friends. Coming closer can be a bit of a stretch for many. Not many speak their minds and follow their hearts in the domain of distance. "We like who we seem to be", told me a distinguished Londoner who also doubled as an unemployed talented writer.

Yet, there is enough sweetness in the air in London, enough to dulce, exhilarate and intoxicate the outlander and to feed those who are hungry for honeydew.
"This is I where grew up", said the silver-haired taxi driver as he dropped me off on Hanson Street. "There", he pointed. "I used to play football with my mates over there." I looked at the old man. Through the vodka haze I could see a tear welling up in his eye. And right where he had been playing football, men had built a cozy sandwich shop: the sandwich shop at the corner of Hanson and Foley Street.
At lunch time the street workers gather together inside this 6-square-metre niche to eat, chat or read the paper. One of them had written a letter to the Parliament the other day and was reading it aloud amidst a storm of applause from the roughest and sweetest people I'd seen in a while. Smiles are contagious in the domain of delight: the little sandwich shop at the corner of Hanson and Foley Street.

On the staircase of my locked apartment in Amsterdam, I was lost in thought and recollection. This love affair possessed all the symptoms of all the complex love affairs I had sustained through the years with varying pride and conviction: upheaval, elation, absorption, withdrawal. Only this one had to be better as it was, in fact, an infatuation with an idea, it seemed and felt so much more...Bang!Bang!Bang! The locksmith was announcing his arrival at the outside door. He climbed up the stairs, walking on tiptoes, trying to step on spots free of travel paraphernalia. Then, after one gentle click, my flat's door was ajar. I heaved a sigh of relief. It was time to walk into my home and find out where the heart was.

According to me

2011-11-20T20:11:00.000+01:00

It was projection, lust and displacement. That's what the inner voice said. The people said it was "wrong judgement". But when was the last time the people were right?
When you miscalled me on Halloween the people said it was "nostalgia". The inner voice said it was an accident.

In British English, which is the most respectable kind of English, one is not supposed to say "according to me". One is advised to say either "in my opinion" or "according to them". They (the people) have the authority of judgement and the first person singular can only make assumptions.
I feel that I ought step up and fix that. According to me, my personal truth is THE truth. Repost, retweet, get involved and embrace the beauty of grammatical and political incorrectness. Start saying: "According to me".

Honestly

2011-10-19T08:48:00.001+02:00

Heaven or Las Vegas

2011-09-25T12:03:00.008+02:00

On an autumn afternoon in 1991 I received a bubble envelope. It was about 3pm and I had just come home from school. In post-communist Bulgaria bubble envelopes meant a package from Western Europe. And packages from Western Europe meant a glimpse into unattainable magic.
I grabbed the envelope and started feeling it with both hands, trying to guess what's inside. In a rush of excitement I was popping the bubbles one by one and my heart was racing in anticipation. There had to be a tape inside. And indeed, there was one. A boxless black audio cassette with a recording of Heaven or Las Vegas by The Cocteau Twins.

I stood outside for a while. The front door was wide open and so was the mailbox. For a short eternity, I was a happy and content 15-year-old, who had just been initiated into a secret realm, invisible to the rest of the world. It was as if I was surrounded by a bubble (one I had left unpopped) and through it I was contemplating the special moment in time. A moment I can never forget. My 15 minutes of heaven in the yard of my grandparents' house, holding my Cocteau Twins tape and the bubble envelope from Western Europe.
The air was rich with the aroma of autumn leaves crushed underfoot and the smoke of outdoor cooking. The late-afternoon October sun was stroking my cheeks. Looking up, I could see the tree branches dancing, entwining, forming beautiful patterns.
The music which I was about to discover was already sounding in my ears and it was soaked with the same thick magic that was holding the bubble around me. Every note was profuse with otherworldly colours and undercurrents promising to take me far, far away into a land of unattainable magic. My dreamland.

Hi hologram

2011-09-20T08:22:00.000+02:00

The talking hologram at Luton airport greets me with her tantalising lispy voice. Then, the augmented reality app on my iPhone offers to transform her into The Queen, Margaret Thatcher or PJ Harvey. I also have the choice to befriend her on Facebook or follow her (semi-automated) twitterfeed.
She is not one of a kind. She does not pretend to be real. Yet she is not a dream. She is an embodiment of a concept, dressed up and suited to serve. A pretty programme.

Gay dating online

2011-09-18T10:34:00.002+02:00

Moulded manliness dripping from their stern faces, firm hands clutching the camera that captures their glorious reflection in the bathroom mirror, torso slightly tilted to expose even the tiniest muscle or the imitation of it caused by well-rehearsed shadow play, the boys are posing online. All they need is love. All they want is attention.

Gay online daters come in all shapes and sizes but there is one word which holds the key to success: sport. No wonder all the cool nicknames contain this operative word: "sport574", "sportyman", "musclesport", "sportsexnow"...
Generally, the older generation of gays favour non-ambiguous nicks referring to physical gratification and/or sexual demeanour. Such as: "musclebull", "topforbott" or "hungtall_rascal". The younger generation dare to be more conceptual and creative with their acquired identities and brand themselves in terms like: "serendipity", "silentfire", "captive_of_delirium".

Yet young or old, they comply to the same norms. Their status lines, the slogans that define their being, are invariably the same. It is either "Just looking around" (as it's not really cool to say: I am human and I need to be loved). Or the cold-blooded "No pic, no reply" (meaning: I'm wearing the trousers here, which of course is hardly ever the case).

And so...
...I practise every day to find some clever lines to say
To make the meaning come through
But then I think I'll wait until the evening gets late and I'm alone with you
The time is right, your perfume fills my head, the stars get red and, oh, the night's so blue
And then I go and spoil it all by sayin' something stupid like
(low-pitched): "What are you looking for?"

Unseasonlity is recurrent

2011-09-17T10:52:00.000+02:00

The morning comes with no warning.
The trash bin overflows and the milk in the fridge lessens with unyielding regularity.
And yet, this man has complete disregard (not denial) for everything seasonal. Maybe it is just a phase. The unseasonal mosquito scars shine through his skin like barcodes of interpretational validity.

The not done

2011-08-30T10:27:00.006+02:00

Think about the activities you are least willing to do. The tedious chores which trigger utter reluctance bordering on mental choke, once your mind incarnates their uninspiring lifeless torsos. Like dried-out tails of dead mice they scrape the recesses of the mind causing the face to assume cliched expressions of immense boredom.
Think of pulling the plug which is underneath the table, having to go back to the supermarket because you forgot to buy salt, changing the dust bag of your vacuum cleaner.

Well, I changed mine the other day. It was not easy. This was one of my "not-done" activities and its dried-out tail was casting a spell of inaction despite the visibly declining performance of the vacuum cleaner. I decided to break the spell. I acted. What followed may have been a dream yet I remember it vividly.
The front of the vacuum cleaner opened slowly, like the bulging door of a space ship. Stuck inside, like monumental alien spawn lay the overripe bag, pregnant with the remains of the days from the last three years. I touched it gently with my fingertip. Surely, it would explode and give birth to a wondrous creature which in no time would start roaming the neigbourhood with piercing shrieks.
I yanked the bag from the vacuum's base and a halo of yellowish translucent smoke formed around it.
The rest is history. Miraculously, the vacuum started performing again, swallowing dust insatiably. I broke the spell of inaction and realised that after venturing into an area of utter, utter, almost inconceivable tediousness, you can feel CLEAN.

The beginning of a great novel

2011-07-29T13:28:00.013+02:00

A) The wasp had foolishly entered the house through the back door. It was manoeuvring between the couch and the kitchen sink neurotically, hula-hooped in oscillating sine waves. Obscenely beautiful. Stingingly stunning. A true Queen trapped in domestic exile.

B) On the train from Paris to Amsterdam one passenger was missing. It was Oscar's pet, the pet he hadn't met yet.

C) Flora had been buying lies for years. Like sugar-coated apples handsomely arrayed in a gilded gift box, they had lured her. Gorgeous and glistening. She had bitten, eaten and regurgitated them season after season and had developed an immunity to their inevitable poison, she thought . Until the present specimen landed in her shopping basket, disguised in a whole new dimension of make-believe, outglistening all the lies she had bought before.

Happy Now

2011-06-12T09:52:00.006+02:00

OFFF 2011 ended with a talk by design guru Stefan Sagmeister entitled "Design and Happiness". I'd never seen Sagmeister live before. Dressed in a grey suit, not too formal to intimidate yet formal enough to solicit awe, he walked onto the stage solemnly, as any guru would do. The moment he opened his mouth and a series of carefully articulated words found its way out, sexed up by a severe Austrian accent, I knew this talk would be highly relevant and important.

Sagmeister's focus was happiness: how can we make ourselves happy in our present circumstances, how can we keep up with the am-I-happy-now sanity checks that our daily life dictates, what does it mean to be happy. The fact that the subject matter and the approach to it were so human as opposed to the preceding talks which were mainly focused on design execution or inspiration (sometimes bordering on conceit) struck a chord with the hundreds of listeners. All of a sudden, they seemed to be unaware of the stone floor they'd been sitting on for hours on end.
In contrast to our parents, we can choose where we want to live, who we want to marry and what we want to do for a living. Yet we are not altogether happy, pointed our Sagmeister. Choice creates opportunities, opportunities co-create fear.
Besides that, the human mind possesses the unique quality of faulty memory. To illustrate this phenomenon, Sagmeister resorted to a magic trick. He showed 5 cards on the screen, asking everyone to memorise their favourite one. After that, he showed 4 cards, explaining that he had removed each and everyone's individual favourite. And yes, that was exactly the case, the audience confirmed. Their favourite card was missing. How was this possible? Unlike any professional magician, Sagmeister was happy to reveal the mystery. He had simply chosen 4 new cards. Because everyone had focused on their favourite and not on the surrounding cards, no one spotted the difference. And this is exactly how the human mind works. We are focused on our own idea and design of happiness and automatically exclude possibilities that may be lying left or right to the centre of our fixation.

Sagmeister did not offer remedies or prescriptions for a happy life yet he shared a bunch of thoughts which seemed to enhance his own well-being in reasonably human proportions. It all came down to having the guts. Have the guts to tell the old lady in the subway who looks stunning and radiant that she does look stunning and radiant, even if you feel that you may be making a fool of yourself. Do tell the taxi driver to change the music which is irritating you. Ask for the pretty girl's phone number in the street, even when you are convinced that you do not stand a chance. Dare to design your life and live it, basically. Aware and awake. Honest and true.

The design guru who'd given a speech on human happiness at a design conference left the stage accompanied by a hurricane of applause. His words were not prescriptive or instructional. They were energising.
My lips curved into a smile, I stepped into the balmy Barcelona night, warmed up by the company of a dear friend.
I was just about to apply the talk's wisdom to my personal pursuit of happiness, when I witnessed this...(push the play button for a happy ending)

Beast rhetoric

2011-04-23T09:27:00.001+02:00

With canine craze, feline frenzy and leporid lust, he was feeding the Beast. The cunning counterpart to the Divine. A humongous, hardly human hunger, immense and insatiable, was turning his instincts into imperatives. All teeth, tongue and tentacles, this man incarnated the Beast.
A wild thing of non-zoological nature.

Spring cleaning

2011-04-18T18:16:00.000+02:00

A fit of sinusitis and the impending doom of a noticeable cold sore held me under house arrest. Aghast at the prospect of consuming my own company in peace and quiet, I decided to clean my house thoroughly hoping to bust some ghosts along the way. It was spring so I chose to label the activity in a popular way and call it spring cleaning.

In the span of an entire day I vacuum-cleaned, dusted, scrubbed, swept and mopped surfaces and disposed of stuff. Lying on the floor, facing the down-unders of kitchen cabinets, I discovered dirt as persistent and persevering as an age-old habit. With every centimeter of retreating dust under the bed and the sofa, I felt I was claiming victory over the rusty patterns of stagnation and backwardness. I even found 50 cents and continued hoovering with a greater determination.
Cabinets were emptied. The contents of overstuffed drawers were reviewed under scrutiny. Letters from old lovers landed in the trash. Photographs of previous editions of my self landed in the trash. My dearest diary of days bygone landed in the trash. I killed and buried darlings without shedding a single tear.

Now I can lounge on my sofa without feeling the ghosts of the past literally gnawing at my leisurely hanging feet. Without fearing that what lies beneath is a full-fledged entity which needs kicking back at regular intervals.
Spring is the time of rejuvenation. Spring cleaning is the practising of cold-blooded extermination. Both come in cycles and display a strictly seasonal character.

Inarticulate

2011-04-13T09:34:00.004+02:00

Good Morning, Friends! YAY, the sun is shining!
OMG, that's awesome!
I totally ♥ it.
BRRRRR, I'm cold tho.
HUH?
LOL that's so funny!
ARRGH, angry now.
ZZZZZZZZ, off to sleep.
YIKES, Language is leaving me!

in·ar·tic·u·late adj
Uttered without the use of normal words or syllables; incomprehensible as speech or language.

A moment in time

2011-03-22T22:37:00.001+01:00

It's the first day of spring. Splotches of sunshine saturate the earth in beautiful asymmetry. Patterns of warmth mark the stretches of dormant skin. Sprouts of joy branch out reassuringly.
An elderly female is standing perfectly still in her pre-fertile garden. Left arm lifted up, right leg stretched back, face split into a permanent smile. She is posing for Google Earth Street View. This is her moment in time.

Project work / Team work

2011-03-14T08:58:00.003+01:00

Hello, Monday morning. Hell-o, agile standing scrum.
What in Heaven's name is this?
Well, imagine members of a project team standing around a table in an all-white office meeting room playing a (Whodunnit?) game. Everyone is a culprit. No one is exempt from being struck.
We kick off with strong language. Subsequently, one is required to shoot an adjacent team member in the arm or leg or shoot oneself in the foot whenever the adjacent team member has been missed. There is no rhyme or reason to it. We do it for the sport of it. Firing guns when words fail to function. It helps us to feel alive, first thing in the morning.

As the strongest link from the last round, I have the right to shoot first and be the first-person shooter. I focus on my adjacent team member, project my abhorrence and antagonism onto them, lift up the gun, squint slightly, then shoot. The target flinches, first from pain, then from anger. As the blood gushes from their arm, menace and motivation murk up their eyes. With their unwounded arm they point their weapon at me, but then they lose grip and shoot the other member in the foot instead. The unexpected turn of events receives a standing ovation.

In order to win, we need to work as a team. In order to work as a team, we need to be sharp, alert and reactive.
Sometimes I get tired of the jumble and blood. Yet I know: no pain, no gain.

F-words

2011-03-08T21:29:00.006+01:00

So I did sit next to them in the end and they did talk about football all the time.
I took advantage of the right to remain silent. Which is exactly what I did yesterday, when my female lunch companion went on and on and on about feasibility.
She also favoured the words "dependencies" and "alignment". But her main focus was feasibility. Not so much food. Or fun.

Methinks, there is no such thing as F-word-free lunches.

Cheers!

2011-03-05T11:22:00.003+01:00

How to finish an email to a colleague? Not that many options, are there? "Best", "Yours faithfully" (I don't think so!), "Kind regards" (not if you are within yawning distance from each other), "Thanks" (can gratitude be more abused?!), [Your Naked Name here] (no preceding modifier, no nonsense) or the ignorantly arrogant Cheers. It does the job most of the time and it kind of means:

"Thanks in advance"
"Do as I say"
"I wash my hands of the matter" (Matthew 27:24 When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.)
"I rise above this"
"Good going"
"Here you go, now fuck off!"

Exclamation-mark dressing for immediacy or emotive shade. Capitals for legitimate graphic illiteracy.
Ambivalence is golden. Cheers!

The Silver Screen

2011-03-01T10:02:00.004+01:00

They are staring at a flickering screen. Transfixed, motionless, tranquilised. Responding unanimously and synchronically. They are both socially and physically asymetric yet their communal perception is conflict-free. Is it ancient hypnotism, a religion or just a simple trick that helps the freeing of the mind and the taming of the ego? Individual fantasies run wild within the reality of one common, neatly populated physical space. An epytome of a perfect world? A rehearsal for a perfect world? The Silver Screen is a powerful weapon of mass unification.

Motion pictures ignite emotion. They propel fear, spark laughter, drive empathy. The chair next to you is occupied by another creature of pulsing flesh and blood. Hence the fear is more real, the laughter is amplified and the empathy materialises within the fellow creature's silhouette, captured by your peripheral vision. There is no interaction yet the emotion is shared.

Sitting in the dark, they are staring at a silver screen. United by silent awe. Voluntarily imprisoned. Captured in a fishnet of imagination. A gentle vulnerable gang. Never uncertain of ever losing the plot.

Gap analysis

2011-02-23T20:01:00.000+01:00

Your shortfall of sleep
Your biological broccoli
Your protein supply
Your password for the wireless
Your daily status
Your sex drive
Your love urge
The assets
The aims
The actionable points
Handsomely arrayed in thumbnail view

Sushi-go-round

2011-02-11T12:53:00.006+01:00

It wasn’t the first time I’d had sushi. God, no! My palate had been lubricated by raw fish on many a delightful occasions. But it was the first time I sat around one of them delight trains, the sushi-go-round.

Like little scientific experiments they came, grouped into clusters of two or three according to colour, taste and surprisability. The train moved smoothly and silently and the delectable morsels passed by solemnly like some awe-inspiring extraterrestrial exhibits. This is well gonna be a business-class dinner, I thought to myself. Then I noticed the chunky red letters painted on the restaurant’s window: “Eat all you can for €15”. Well then, sort of.

There was no plate in front of me. Only a little bowl for the wasabi & soy sauce. I reached out for a fat specimen decorated with glistening orange crumbs and pinched it with a plastic chopstick. I didn’t take the tiny plate it was placed on and let its two sexy plate mates move on. Then I snatched a crunchy ball. And another one. The half-empty plates carried on their perpetual journey. My taste buds perked up and so did my confidence. “Eat all you can” read “Eat all you want” in my menu. I scored a salmon coat and a tuna blanket letting the naked oblong rice torsos retreat shamefully. Then I nicked two giant prawns. More and more naked oblong rice torsos going round in circles of shame. This was fun!

“What do you think you are doing?"
I had to be the addressee of this wrathful question as I was the only customer in the restaurant. Still I looked around in confusion searching for the invisible culprit.
“Please, take the whole plate, will you?!”

I eyed Mister Sushi Master defeatedly. Caught in the act, wasn’t I? The Liberty which was so generously granted to me was now being restricted. Alright, I’ll stick to the rules next time. In my defence, I didn’t know better. I was only being natural. Trying to come across as a natural. Call me a sinner, I was taken for a ride by the sushi train.

Transmediale continued

2011-02-05T16:25:00.006+01:00

The conference merges the boundaries between linguistics, poetry and the visual arts exploring analogies of interaction and response:ability.

"Response:ability is a call to action - to jump out of "stand-by" mode and grasp the moment of our own individual liveness within the cacophony of digital communications density."

Installed to inspire are bicycles attached to music-making computers attached to wired bodies attached to reflective environments. An all-responsive organism.

But is it Art, Eddy?

2011-02-04T16:39:00.000+01:00

Dress an austere-looking lady girl in black. Let her wriggle and writhe on the floor. Surround her in ambient soundscapes. Then call the whole thing something like "Clairvoyant transmutation of paratactic hangers". It seems to work.
But is it Art, Eddy?

Response:ability

2011-02-02T18:34:00.001+01:00

@Transmediale 2011

Travelling

2011-01-26T07:44:00.000+01:00

Bus, boat, plane, scooter, cable car: vehicles of forward movement. The emotional undercurrents in the lower abdominal area are the fugitive identifiers of transition.

Meet Hong Kong

2011-01-24T12:55:00.003+01:00

Washed away by the waves of consciousness, Inception-style, squeezed between giant slippery chopsticks, vainly thrashing legs in the air as skyscrapers lean down on the way to The Peak, bathed in laser lights, then dumped onto a pile of bedazzling bling, waiting to be sucked dry like a delicious throbbing dumpling, the Hong Kong visitor is officially overpowered. No pleasantries. Only good old manufactured magic. Senses blurred, Permanent smile fixed on each face.

Meet Hong Kong. The giant sticky-licky candy octopus.
This fantasy is real.

The magic of Siem Reap

2011-01-23T11:58:00.000+01:00

Travelling from place to place, one hardly allows oneself to get attached. I did. I got attached to Siem Reap. Upon leaving it, I felt a strange heartache. The heartache of being severed from a location of love.

It must have been the hypnotising splendour of the Angkor Wat temples. A parallel universe where the sun always shines and the birds always sing to exhilarate the wanderer.

Or was it the beautiful stranger lying next to me in the massage salon close to the Old Market? We never spoke to each other. We only stared at each other's feet while they were being skilfully massaged by tiny animated hands.

And then there was Sok Ban. The owner of the tiny animated hands.
I couldn't get enough of her massages. And I couldn't get enough of her melancholic dark eyes.

One evening, on my way to the Angkor Palm restaurant, I dropped by the massage salon to say hi to Sok Ban.

"Where do you eat?", I asked her.
"I eat market.", she answered quickly, eyes looking down.
"Is it...good food?" What a dull question! How could I?!
"Good for me. No good for you. Restaurant good for you.", said Sok Ban with a modest smile and looked down again.

I wanted to kiss her, embrace her, marry her and give her the magic that she needed. I wanted to take her to restaurants, buy her dresses and treat her like a princess.
I am sure we were a best married couple in a previous life. Yet in this life I was more likely to marry the beautiful stranger with the handsome feet. If he ever spoke to me, that is.

I am writing this on a night bus from Siem Reap to Ha Tien. Since my pen and paper are squashed somewhere between cone straw hats and overripe baby bananas, I am writing this in my head. Engraving the words slowly into a mental whiteboard. My eyes are laden with sleep and my stomach cramped yet I find a strange comfort in this engravery. The strange heartache of severance is waning upon the blazing realisation that the location of love is only a stop on the grander itinerary of love.

Full-body massage

2011-01-19T02:03:00.000+01:00

"Go, Go, GO", the profusely made-up Asian lady at the reception desk instructed me. "First massage, pay later".
I didn't know what awaited me at my hotel's spa. It was a fairly satisfactory hotel and I expected a fair degree of satisfaction.

A short amiable gentleman in a beige uniform ushered me into a locker room and directed me, by means of gestures, to take off my clothes. Then he furnished me with a blue satin gown and a pair of over-sized satin shorts. The silky fabric soothed my skin. I could smell the sweet scent of repose. An eager hand, attached to an obedient body in a beige uniform, opened the door to a waiting room of sorts.
It was a spacious circular chamber, dimly lit and decorated with Egyptian motifs which seemed to be projected onto the walls and the vaulted ceiling.
Astral Asian vocals trickled down like angelic irrigation. Cool conditioned air was seeping into every opening of my silky outfit, causing my body to shiver gently and stretch back onto the quilted chaise long.
One intoxicating tea and two slices of water melon later, I was summoned and escorted to the next level, literally. A flight of carpeted stairs led me to a room at the end of a long corridor. My final destination.

The room was plain and oblong and contained nothing but a big bed with a face hole. The walls were covered with silver-lined dark-blue wallpaper.
I lay down on my stomach and waited.
Hypnotic hum of air-conditioner. Then a quick knock on the door. "Heylow". A tiny jovial girl smiled at me.

Through the head hole I zoomed in on her blue platform thong shoes. Then her tiny feet flickered away, evacuating the platforms, and I could feel them racing all over my back, tiny toes pinching my skin skillfully. She alternated feet with hands, making my body perk up. After treating my back elaborately, she flipped me over, grabbed my chest and shouted: "Booby!"

I closed my eyes and felt two tiny claws gently scratching my upper thighs...

I would like to say: the rest is history but the truth is that after several explicit indecent proposals, I sneaked out while she went to the toilet. No happy ending yet a huge smile on my face.
I was still smiling when the profusely made-up Asian lady at the reception desk woke me from my daydream.
"TIP, TIP, TIP", she insisted.
My tip was fairly satisfactory. Just like the full-body massage.

I am still smiling while putting the story in words. Maybe the ending was happy, after all.

Wants and needs

2011-01-18T08:37:00.000+01:00

"I want to go to Madrid and dance to tribal house", said Virginie.
"I want to launch a site called In-your-facebook", said Rodrigo.
"I want to sell you chems through a gay dating site", said Waterman$1968.

I am not buying any of this. Do I need any of this? I am getting my wants and needs mixed up.

"According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a " want " is defined as having a strong desire for something. The word " need " is defined as lack of the means of subsistence. In every arena of life, the two concepts are opposing elements." (Merriam-Webster Online).

Concept & design

2011-01-14T12:11:00.014+01:00

I sketched my trip to Vietnam & Cambodia with the wonderful tool called Google Maps. One week into the trip, looking through the window of the bus to Siem Reap, I can see the white lines and curves of Google Maps fleshing out into evidential matter, the clean-cut geometrical planes turning into rugged roads and glorious rivers, the blanks filling up with virile vegetation. As my journey progresses day by day, the lines and curves unmask yet another colourful design and I keep on thinking of how it all started in my head. With an idea. Then the experiences materialised, providing the decors for my movie, waiting for me to take the lead role.

The evidential matter is not always as consistent as the conceptual representation but it is alive and real, surprising, captivating, rewarding. It overpowers the slight cases of stomach sickness and the self-preserving fits of fatigue.

And so I feel priviliged to have learned that:

Weasel coffee is made from the beans of coffee berries which have been eaten by the Asian Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) and other related civets, then passed through its digestive tract.
In South Vietnam one mixes the blood of a (still living) snake with wine to achieve exquisite taste.
The company of complete strangers can be completely comforting.

These things may not be on Google Maps but they are definitely in my movie. A transcontinental movie with a Hollywood adaptation called Eat Pray Love (if my memory serves me well).

Early this morning, I was speeding through the bustling streets of Phnom Penh in a pink tuk-tuk. The crispy morning breeze was stroking my bare arms making me feel fine. 1001-night-esque palaces swung by like snapshots from a magical showreel. Spontaneously, I looked back and right behind me stood a titan of an elephant, pacing solemnly, in the middle of the street. I smiled and felt fine. This time, consciously. Fine in the company of one.
The trip looked good on paper. The wireframes made sense. Yet the actual designs are something else. Thank you, Google Maps!

A reminder

2011-01-12T18:08:00.002+01:00

A visit to the Tuol Sleng genocide museum in Phnom Penh leaves me appalled. Extreme gore movies are not entirely fictional. Just as art museums exist to remind us of the heights of humanities, this torture palace of a high school is here to remind us of our darkest depths.

A capitalist in Ho Chi Minh City

2011-01-08T07:07:00.010+01:00

I thought that my world was huge, all-encompassing, multi-dimensional. Turns out, it is rather small. When people around me do not speak English whatsoever, when Facebook is officially censored by the government, when there is no "decent" restaurant offering "safe" food after 21.00, my world starts downsizing desperately, sending out hysterical S.O.S.'s. Could it be, I am left to my own devices. Humanity, help me.

The wildly oscillating, uncompromisingly real city of Ho Chi Minh is urging me to take off my shades and trade my small world for a bigger REALm. Instead of constantly and panically protecting myself from being cheated, dissatisfied or unheard, I should just bite the roasted chicken feet, pay the extra 15 cents, trust and be happy. The wondrous hues of Ho Chi Minh are mine to uncover.

Listen to this:
I grew up in communist Bulgaria. Today, I am being a capitalist in Ho Chi Minh city, sulking because my global connectivity is supposedly obstructed.
Ironic? Yes. Educational? YES!
I REALise that in my newly-granted bigger REALm every surcharge is a potential bonus.

Back to the future

2010-12-28T14:42:00.001+01:00

Browsing through the NME app, I cannot help but marvel at the names of today's bands. Gay for Johny Depp, Sad day for puppets, Four letter word.

In my my time, bands were given simple names like: Einsturzende Neubaten, Revolting cocks, 1000 Homo DJs. Somebody save the collective imagination!

Breakfast with Socrates: delish!

2010-12-28T08:35:00.004+01:00

Robert Rowland Smith's little volume of essays "Breakfast with Socrates" provides a grand examination of everyday life. From waking up through shopping and going to the gym to having sex and falling asleep. Each of these activities are being analysed under scrutiny, painstakingly questioned and speculated upon until the mundane and the typical can no longer be detected.

This elaborate and sometimes hard to swallow breakfast is formally chaired by Socrates yet it is being attended by a constellation of very important personae. Aristophane, Nietzsche, Freud, Ferdinand de Saussure, Barack Obama, Hannibal Lecter and the ladies from Sex and the Cities are only few of them. Enlightened by their flame and equipped with the right cutlery Smith performs spot-on vivisections on trivial artefact matter, making the reader an accomplice. The latter cannot help but welcome their new role intrigued by the logical yet frivolous critique on their life paradigms, struck by reverse empathy, an empathy with the man they used to be.

The reader/accomplice is given the opportunity to see beyond the obvious. Attending a party is also a political act. Cooking dinner and cannibalism are not as unrelated as they seem. Sex is "an attempt at immortality" and "a biological trick to preserve the species." What were you thinking?

Spiced up by exquisite language: luscious alliterations, hilarious hyperbolae, mouthwatering metaphors, the breakfast calls for slow and affectionate consumption.
I savoured every morsel.

The beggar chose

2010-12-26T21:35:00.007+01:00

The beggar was singing, jovially and full-throatedly, his legs astride his beggar's bike. Every now and then his song would culminate into an ecstatic "Ay-ay-ayyyy!". He was one happy-go-lucky man.

I was observing him with explicit admiration when he suddenly stopped, bent down and picked up a pack of Marlboro's. It was a brand-new, unopened pack of Marlboro's. The beggar collected it and a huge affirmative smile spread cross his bearded face. He looked at me and winked, as if to say "I saw this coming", then disappeared into the darkness astride his beggar's bike, singing away.

The beggar had chosen his luck. (that's why) He was happy way before he got lucky.

iPhonic

2010-12-19T20:47:00.001+01:00

Auto-correction: a blessing in disguise or a weapon of false etymology?
Antidote for the retarded or toxin for the untarded?
Yet another stimulator of subversive narratives?
Panacea or plague?

Well, correct me if I'm wrong but I'd rather do without.

Supermarket rush-hour

2010-12-11T19:07:00.009+01:00

The supermarket is a dangerous place. Please, drive your trolleys carefully and avoid congested spots for the sake of your life and the lives of others.

Now, traffic lights are GO, turn left, then slam straight to toiletries. CAUTION: baby onions and Chardonnay from Chile are cutting through from the left. Two blond braided baby girls, screaming their guts out, on your right, are advancing slowly but surely. One of them starts throwing up, here we go, congestion causes indigestion. This is a proper traffic jam and you've only accommodated one courgette and a gallon of low-fat milk in your vehicle. The driving rules are yet to be defined. As a high-speed grandma dashes right between your legs, an obese banana lands on your back and the contents of a top-shelf box of chocolates scatter artfully across the floor.

Just as the walls start closing in on you, there's Belinda Carlisle's innocently pre-Shakirean voice crooning out "Heaven is a place on Earth". Well, you think to yourself, maybe not this particular place then. Maybe some other supermarket, populated by Stepford wives or other neatly-programmed species. Right?

Hold on...the traffic police are evacuating frozen food. Go on, take a look and share the fun. It's the weekend, after all!

Dance with David Lynch

2010-12-03T13:37:00.000+01:00

...and just go with the flow.

You see

2010-12-01T08:34:00.001+01:00

Well, Clarice? Have the lambs stopped screaming?
The owls are not what they seem, you see. Neither are the sacrifices we make. Penance for pleasure (For Fuck's sake, grin and bear it), martyrdom for love? Is it all worth it?

You see, things look different through the lens of the deep tangled forest. The deep tangled forest of our unidentified dreams, automatic aspirations, infant fears.
Ah, the haunting memory of getting lost as a child. The very first time you got lost. The way you ran haphazardly past unfamiliar automobiles and strange grocery stores. The original numbness-inducing panic run.
You were inevitably found back then. Yet the memory of being lost, not the memory of being found, stayed alive.
Unlike the rain forest, the deep tangled forest does need to be saved. It is severely self-preserving.

You fight back with metaphors of self-betterment and heroism. But all you need to do is look around and see.
And yet, I have no plans to call on you, Clarice. The world's more interesting with you in it.

Paranormal Activities

2010-11-28T12:35:00.005+01:00

A Narnia Production

Delightful design

2010-11-20T19:32:00.004+01:00

Train

2010-11-20T17:42:00.001+01:00

The diagonal lights dashing by

rhythmically
yet asymmetrically

make this train journey a most engaging first-person narrative.
I'm in!

Back in bloom

2010-11-13T09:50:00.003+01:00

Reassuringly.

Hammam

2010-11-08T13:47:00.008+01:00

Wrapped in cotton wool of sizzling foam, lay three naked bodies. Freshly scrubbed of the multiple layers of the mundane. I resided in one of them. Couldn't tell which one as things appeared differently at the height where I was hovering and the mountains of foam made gender undecipherable.

I remember that I liked it. Through every sensor, receiver, antenna of my body I felt intense pleasure, so well-deserved it brought tears to my eyes. A humongous jellyfish was ejaculating comforting wet bubbles all over me. I was entering a whole new state of pleasurability compared to which my prior experiences of physical or spiritual gratification seemed premature and perfunctory. Blurrrrr...The retreating army of the mundane, the piercing eyes of the masseuse, the setting, the situation, the script.
I had to ask for pen and paper at the reception desk. They gave me apple tea and Turkish delight. As well.

The epics of pleasure are now being put in writing.
Paradise smells like cinnamon tonight.

Amsterdam: city of wonders

2010-11-07T09:50:00.002+01:00

Starlight

2010-11-04T22:30:00.001+01:00

Italian men walking dogs in the park. Awesomely awash in starlight.

SPA

2010-10-27T09:49:00.003+02:00

According to commercial etymology, spa stands for Sanitas Per Aquam (health through water). The Greeks and the Romans turned bathing into a fine art. The Turks invented the hamam. The Finns gave us the hermetic heat experience called sauna. Our conspicuously consumptuous contemporary world took all this to another level. Wondrous strongholds of serenity came into being giving the modern man or woman an opportunity to slow down and relax for an eternity of several sweet hours.
On a rainy autumn afternoon I was on my way to one of these establishments for the very first time in my life.

A path covered by autumn leaves of red and gold gave way to a long narrow passage, reminiscent of an airport terminal, which released me into a flourescent-lit hallway. The Other Side. Otherworldly odors in the air. Sweet sedating sound of music. Auburn-haired front-desk fairies wearing nothing but a smile.

A staircase brought me to Paradise. In the middle of an excessive space a translucent body of water accommodated a flock of happy naked specimens. The place was profusely populated. Bubbles-De-Vere-esque dames and Kafkaesque gents were sliding along blissfully. From the Finnish sauna to the open-air jacuzzi, to the waterfall, back to the caldarium and on to the whirlpool. Vaginas and penises came in different shapes and forms.

My first response to the tranquility was irritation. I missed my phone. I was annoyed that the hamam treatment I was supposed to have was overbooked. My body was refusing to adapt to the languid rhythm.
But then very slowly the edges of my ego melted down and dissolved into the milk-warm waters of the aroma bath. I felt pleasantly all-rounded. My sarcasm and shyness melted away too and all I saw around me were human beings in need of simple human pleasures.
Even the brutest face turns blissful by the gentle invasion of warm water. Even the itchiest eyes turn dreamy by the gust of lavender-scented steam and the lips follow, adopting the contours of a smile. I don't know if SPA really is an acronym for Sanitas Per Aquam. But it surely means Gaudium Per Aquam. Happiness through water.

Go get it: www.spazuiver.nl

Auto-defrost

2010-10-20T11:32:00.004+02:00

Finally, I found it: the long-lost manual for my criminally underused microwave. Now I could learn how to auto-defrost my chicken fillet and white fish.
Previously, I would bake the frozen meat for hours on end until it somehow defrosted, turning into a crusty lump, hard as a rock, yet abundant with treats of mucousy raw matter on the inside. Reluctant to concede culinary failure, I would be chewing on the exquisite home-made crusty lump (for hours on end) until my hunger was fooled. For the record, I seldom cook. But now all of this was going to change.

Yet, the microwave manual was not the only one to resurface from the dark recesses of my cupboard. A profusion of instructive documents lay on my sofa, spread wide open in erotic disarray, beckoning me. My machines had feelings too. They insisted on being operated accordingly.
Take the bread maker...It was a special birthday gift which I had only used twice and then given up. I had been fantasising about making my own bread for several years before I obtained this magical machine. It seemed so romantic to be able to make your own bread, just like in the old days. However, the bread I produced was nothing but a floury miscarriage. Only because I was too lazy to read the manual.

Well, it seems that my need of auto-defrosting guidance has switched on a whole new me. Machines are human too. Instructive love may not be in my book but it certainly is in theirs.
I shall listen to the inner voices of my machines.
I shall cherish our union and love them more each day than I did the day before.
I shall trust them and respect them, laugh with them and cry with them, loving them faithfully through good times and bad, regardless of the obstacles we may face together.

Should anyone here object to this union...

Blue leather glove

2010-10-19T16:01:00.009+02:00

Blue leather glove,
sprawled upon the cobbled bridge,
kicked through and through,
spat on,
crushed by scurrying sensation-hungry feet of Spanish sighseers,
time after time.

Blue leather glove engraved in my brain. Forget about it...No, wait.
..its beveled contours branded upon the cobblestones.
Lonesome,
No, singular.
A statement of sufficiency.
Its other half adds nothing but the convention of a pair.

The morning after

2010-10-12T20:41:00.000+02:00

The morning after the sleeping pill felt like a strange dream. Things were happening haphazardly. People were regarding me with conspiracy and uncertainty. The day was regressing slowly.

Then this happened:

The Fear

2010-10-11T12:15:00.003+02:00

I fear:

this progress bar may be presenting a coloured translation of time.
the fortune cookie may make me a lesser Caucasian.
the horror may turn into a comedy show.
this particular apple may be a tad tangier for the parameters of this particular fruit salad.
best practices and worst-case scenarios may be vague-rhetoric vehicles devoid of rhyme or reason.

The list gets longer and longer and the bullet points too frightful to mention.

States of disguise

2010-10-04T14:30:00.002+02:00

"Don't forget that the devil is a liar", whispered Anne Rice in my ear.

I looked around but she was nowhere to be seen. I found myself amidst an undulating sea of bodies in various states of undress. Nipples and splits and sturdy varnished male toes sticking through the peep of platform pumps.

Masked faces were staring at me wherever I looked. The states of undress matched the states of disguise. Dwarves in Mickey Mouse costumes, stark-naked women with Santa Clause beards and obese clowns morphed into asymmetrical kaleidoscopic patterns.
Drenched in disguise, I dug into the flesh of the communal spirit. The devil finds work for idle hands to do. Since I was not myself that night, mischief was widely tolerated.

On the way out I left my golden mask on the back of a bike for an Italian tourist from Palermo to find. 18-years-old, obscenely opiated, idle-handed. Eager to live a lie for the night.

Notice

2010-09-30T12:39:00.000+02:00

In the maelstrom of events the milestones are left unnoticed.

(Did you know that) Every day, destined for greatness, boasts memorable milestones. One ought to notice. From the eye of the vortex (current location) or through the mists of time.

Inoticethemilestonesoftoday.

The element of Surprise

2010-09-27T21:30:00.000+02:00

Last week's favourite song, its soul tarnished by the repeat function of an infamous media player, has lost its novelty. The surprise of its discovery has been consumed and outgrown.

Let's say that last week you were treated to a nice surprise. Let's say that its effect was dissatisfactory. The element of Surprise remains locked in a fragment of time. It is not valid NOW. Yet back then the surprise was potent and powerful. You wouldn't take that away from it.

How do we keep the element of Surprise virile?
a) By keeping the ground for surprisability fertile.
b) By appreciating surprises for what they are
c) By accepting that their consequences may not bring the benefits we anticipate.

It's a trick question.

Your good side

2010-09-26T08:36:00.001+02:00

Everyone has a good side. A sexily saturated, favourably exposed, essence-encompassing good side. The ultimate projection of you. The iconic you. Your potential to be you. You know what I'm talking about.

The tailor

2010-09-22T17:40:00.001+02:00

Once upon a time, there was a tailor called Saeed. In his tiny studio he was making outlandish garments for future brides. Day in, day out, the tailor was singer-sewing, humming the sweet tones of Mon Amie la Rose and Soleil D'Egypte. His eyes would glisten with glee every time his long fine fingers added a touch of lace to a delicate design.

One day, a fairy knocked on the door of his tiny studio. This was not entirely uncalled for. Fairies had often visited the tailor in his dreams but this was the first one to appear in the flesh. The fairy was a spitting image of Saeed and she was wearing one of his bridal dresses. For the first time Saeed could see how his work complemented him.

"You a just a man in a dress", Saeed couldn't help saying. "Why have you disguised yourself like this?"
"It's an acquired habit.", the fairy answered calmly. "Being eccentric is all about expressing yourself through acquired tastes and habits."
This was not a tailor-made answer to Saeed's question.
"I have a funny feeling you are trying to tell me something about myself", he said looking the fairy in the eye.

Then the tailor realised that he was standing before himself. This was a moment of unaccountable intensity. The dress had ceased to matter and vanished in thin air. There was just him and himself in perfect parallelism.
Time stood still. Only a ribbon of lace, the colour of amethyst, drifted in the air. The echo of Natacha's voice, sultry and soulful, gained substance and soon all was sealed together into a beautiful tapestry. A tapestry which decorated the wall of the tiny studio of the tailor Saeed.

Fig meat

2010-09-18T21:55:00.000+02:00

So I bite the succulent fig meat. It yields and surrenders to the gentle penetration of my teeth. A plentitude of hungry grains and pores arouses my taste buds.

As I let go of the semi-ravished pulp, it shapeshifts into dead meat. Then I shapeshift into a lion.
The essence of the story remains the same.

Great uncanny poetry

2010-09-18T18:52:00.000+02:00

When you're sitting all alone in the middle of the floor
There's something uncontrollable
As you sit there watching the door
Colour me

Tattooed on the inside
Slap your thigh, slap your calf,
Sing your mantra, leave your mark
Colour me

Something fierce along my spine
To scare the madman from behind
Fortify my arms with some snake-like lines
Colour me, colour me

Like a stomach split in half
By a surgeon's cutting art
Colours me, colours me, colours me

When you're sitting all alone
In the middle of the floor
There's something uncontrollable
As you sit there watching the door

Tattooed on the inside
A lonely feeling
Inoculating
Colours me

Slap your thigh, slap your calf,
Sing your mantra, leave your mark
Colour me

Siouxsie & The Banshees: Tattoo
An unfading tattoo from an unfading B-side collection.

Proximity

2010-09-15T22:38:00.003+02:00

Somewhere on the coast of Mexico, a turtle is laying her eggs.
Somewhere in the United Kingdom, the drinks are going down well.
Somewhere in Amsterdam, someone is talking distributed interactive experience.

Or rather:

"Dude, you can't believe what I saw when I was in Mexico. This turtle was laying eggs on the beach. Pretty amazing!", said the guy at the gym.
"And the drinks are going down well", said presenter of the BBC talk show.
"We offer our users a distributed interactive experience", said the digital creative.

Or maybe even:

As the turtle was laying her eggs on the coast of Mexico, the digital creative was talking distributed interactive experience and the drinks were going down well.

Inducing proximity between unrelated, partially fictitious events is a human right.

The foreskins of the heart

2010-09-12T18:35:00.038+02:00

Is there a method to the madness? When it comes to love and affection, want and need seem to be divided by an unfathomable gap.

The ones who are stuck in rusty constructions fantasise about real love. The ones who are free to decide fantasise about constructions. Many of the latter are erroneously called single as to be single, you need to be one, not a half of a hypothetical whole. Or a self-draining search engine.

You and I simply keep on writing using the subject as intellectual food for thoughtful speculation. You and I resort to speculation as it's hard to get to the point when it comes to love and affection. It's easier to get beyond the point and get lost in worth, vanity, sacrifice, commitment, fantasy.
Many are the foreskins of the heart.

Thin line

2010-09-09T12:11:00.008+02:00

There's a thin line between Sunrise and Sunset: the horizon.

Prosaic verses

2010-09-08T11:59:00.000+02:00

The rain falls down. Sometimes less. Sometimes you arrive at work wet from the waist down only. Once inside the accommodating womb of the office, you stare fixedly at the raindrops trickling down the window. On a morning like this, they tend to look like spermatozoids trickling down a pleasure dome. A chimera.

Then you catapult yourself back into the world of obligations, monthly installments and recurrent appointments. Life-improvement services require discipline and servitude. Your iPhone subscription is not excessive in consumption, yet it wouldn't be making your life complete without serial sustenance.

And yet, the essential man knows no fear of routine and excels in rising above it. The essential man resides in you. The same you which is accidentally caught up between your mortgage plan and your Oedipal duties.

Salt and pepper

2010-09-07T22:25:00.003+02:00

If I had added that extra mushroom, the pasta would have been different.
If I had applied that extra gradient layer to the photoshop file, the design would have been difefrent.
If I had attached that extra word to the string, the meaning would have been different.

Different is good enough. Good enough is just a step away from spot-on.
My pasta was spot-on.
Salt and pepper are ingredients too.

The Belt

2010-08-31T08:36:00.004+02:00

I saw the belt in a tiny shop in a tiny town in Spain. A town where trained gay feet march in rhythmical progression in no fear of fours night after night . It stole my heart with its clear-cut ornamental design, a design that would contribute greatly to my clear-cut positioning in this world, I dared to think. Yet the belt was above the budget. I am not a big spender when it comes to belts. Therefore, our prematurely confessed and shared love was not meant to be. I turned my back on it and left the tiny shop.

On the train to Barcelona a slide show of numerous angles and perspectives of the belt, glossy & glistening, was weaving its way through my mind making doubt and regret the leitmotif of my journey. Colossal and intimidating what ifs were splashing against the train windows, leaving ferocious patterns. Those patterns in turn spawned musical echoes, which inarticulate as they were, sounded a bit like:

And I hope that you have all
That you ever dreamed of
Oh, I do wish you joy
And I wish you happiness
But above all this
I wish you love...

Since I failed to listen to my heart, the least I can do is devote this little ode to the belt. I could not have it but I can at least own the memory of it fleshed out in words. To address it personally: "You are just the type of belt I can completely and recklessly fall for."
There, I said it.

Light-and-shadowplay

2010-08-26T09:58:00.000+02:00

The light-and-shadowplay behind my eye-lids in a state of pre-sleep or near-awakening. The proximity of the inner world, the recycled patterns of the outside world.

Slanted planes of dotted light reflections. Gentle morphs bring a subtlety of colour closer to the mind's eye. The darkness provides the background for a drizzle of semi-transparent reds and yellows. An unobtrusive take-over.

Directing this art takes calm and focus and results in projective auto-creation. An intuitive screen-saver of your imagination. Before you know, you are a visitor in your own mind.

Non-popular writing

2010-08-21T10:48:00.001+02:00

Vehicles of digi-cultural activism, antonymous of the chariots of fire, galvanise our robots by means of strong meta-language.

He's not him

2010-08-20T13:00:00.000+02:00

P.S. Identity fraud is an evil crime.

In Berlin

2010-08-16T22:42:00.004+02:00

courtesy of Scott

After the risotto with asparagus and prawn comes the humongous strudel with whipped cream the size and shape of a semi-aroused schwanz lying next to it. There is so much to absorb in Berlin, I don’t know where to start...

On an early morning in Tiergarten Marianne B. is being walked by her master. She is 40, ginger and naked. Scheide shaved. The leather leash around her neck is red and shiny. She walks slowly and solemnly. The bottom is always in control.

At midday, outside the Neues Museum where the gaze of Nefertiti meets the colossal torso of Helios, Russian accordion virtuoso Maxim S. plays Chopin. Every now and then a glistening coin finds its way into his rumpled black hat. The man is a genius.

After midnight, thousands of dance ritualists are lining up in front of industrial techno shrine Berghain. It takes more than an hour for the chosen ones to get in. The unlucky ones who appear uncool in their geeky checquered shirts get summoned aside and removed from the line. Whatever happens to the ones who cannot make it to Berghain? You never see those people again.

So much to absorb. In Berlin. Einfach so.
I am spreading the word.

Paris and Berlin

2010-08-14T18:12:00.002+02:00

Paris is password-protected. Berlin is open-source.

Paris is a lover. Berlin is a comrade.
Paris is singular. Berlin is plural.
Paris is pure poetry. Berlin is pure.

Paris is a gold-studded oxygen mask. Berlin is oxygen.
Paris has a heart of Gold. Berlin is not heart-centred and treats its internal organs equally. They all come in gold, silver or bronze and get served with sauerkraut.

Paris is all about timing. Berlin is anytime.
Paris doesn't bite. Berlin is edible.
Paris is mystifying. Berlin is occasionally overcast.

Berlin is history repeated.
Paris is history.

New skin

2010-08-12T11:01:00.002+02:00

The interfaces of our faithful tools evolve almost unnoticed. We adapt to this evolution with remarkable ease. Yet the first muddled moments of re-discovery can get us out of balance for a short eternity. Why is Gmail's Compose link suddenly a button? Why is it sitting above my Inbox nav? Why are the statements of others on Facebook grayed-out? What is the peculiar tooltip popping up every now and then above our friends' pictures?

Some of us may not be even aware of this lexicon yet they too find themselves intuitively resistant, behaviourally challenged, tantalised by operational hesitance.
Until the new skin grows on us and we shed the anachronistic rounded corners, non-buttony links and obsolete lay-outs.

Circuit party

2010-08-09T14:19:00.001+02:00

So I'm in this cubicle, right, taking a break from the beatz. Mind you, being in a cubicle at a circuit party is a communal experience. Listen to this...

In the cubicle to the left people are having sex. "Ouais, ouais...tu es magnifique, ouais, ouais, ouais...". Did you know that "ouais" is an informal equivalent for "oui"? I didn't but now I do.
In the cubicle to the right someone is throwing up.

East is pleasure.
West is pain.

I am the middle man and this sonic cocktail of pleasure and pain is for me to enjoy.
A cacophony of groaning and barfing spiced up by the hollow echo of the beatz.
Can I take sides? Shall I go East and get off or go West and go with the flow?

As my beloved ancestor Count Dracula used to say: Children of the night. What Beautiful music they make!

Public pissoir

2010-08-08T11:18:00.004+02:00

Awash in mystery, the elderly man in the public pissoir faces the World with his back. One can smell the thick fumes of history around here.
A relief for some.

A true writer

2010-08-05T23:29:00.003+02:00

for Lisette

A true writer takes you on a journey with no destination. He or she meanders through meadows and swamps disconnected with what may seem like the main trajectory of the journey and renders them vivid and fertile and relevant. Effortlessly.

A true writer disengages from the whereabouts and the circumstances of their story and gently woos the reader to do the same. In Paulo Coelho's Veronika decides to die the protagonist lives in Lubljana and this is important to a certain extent. Yet she could be living in Morocco and the reader would have the same empathy with her and the ideological content which she represents.

The reader feels safe in being guided by the unintentiality of the narrative and simply enjoys the ride. It is then hard to say what a true writer's book is really about. His or her work becomes a starting point for an honest interchange of thoughts and ideas. The reader arrives, yet again, at new locations of understanding drifting away yet umbillically connected to the mainland of the true writer's mind.

Screenplay

2010-08-04T23:13:00.001+02:00

He is as cliche as the Chinese characters tattoo on his left forearm. If he were a band, he would be U2. Generally likable yet severely non-distinct. He only serves as an introduction to me. An imaginary protagonist in a belletristic exercise. So that's him.

What about her? Is she worthy of the stage? Can she fulfill a little part of me, maybe a reflection of him? You know, maybe she could have the Chinese characters tattoo on her right shoulder which is even more cliche with her being a woman...and an artist. Right...so she is an artist. She is a nurse of the Universe and she is becoming worthier of the stage as we speak.

I must admit, the character generation process so far has been leasurely and honest.

Inception

2010-07-31T11:30:00.004+02:00

Several years ago, The Cell impressed me with the glimpse it provided into the underworld of the mind. This glimpse was coloured and speculative and operated on a purely visual level.
Several years later, Inception devises an immaculately crafted taxonomy, speculative again yet with utmost accuracy, of the infinite raw material that underlies our lives.

Ideas are like viruses and they can leave us hanging between fantasy and reality. The projections of Love and loss can be nurtured into eternal entities. The architecture of dreams is as solid as the architecture of any construct in the physical world.

Intense intellectual stimulation triggering recognition made the two hours spent at the cinema seem like a dream which lasted for years. A dream I, and the bulk of the people sitting around me, were ready to understand. Our collective consciousness of the Unconscious is definitely evolving.

the insignificant

2010-07-28T10:04:00.000+02:00

The insignificant (speak not its name in vain) surfacing ever so slightly like the miscarried spawn of a monster. Gaining substance every time the human brain loses focus. Reaching out like the stinger of Splice every time the Significant is on a roll, reassuringly. Prescriptive witchcraft fails to drive it away (Coyote urine powder comes in different packages these days).
It only dwindles to nothing when its insignificance is realised.

In fact, were we not writers, there would be no mention of it whatsoever.

the insignificant, uncapitalised.

Mental picture

2010-07-21T08:41:00.000+02:00

The earnest entreaty to Allah, monotonous yet insisting sound patterns, continuously seeping out of the crevices of a Sony cassette recorder, is my mental picture of the day.

"What kind of music is this?"
Intently ignorant question.
The anticipation of an angry answer is worse than the answer itself.
"This ain't no music, my friend. It is a reading from the Koran."
The ivory white teeth glisten underneath the pitch-black moustache.

I zoom in on the lamb chops, pork liver, chicken breasts. The insistent sound patterns provide the background for my non-biased observation. Its only partiality being a religious sympathy for otherness.

Straight bar

2010-07-16T10:46:00.003+02:00

Vodka-lime pre-puke haze. The sonic haze spread by Alicia Keys in a moment of Rapture.
The sound of tomorrow's hangover.
The animated blabber of a female American specimen. The cheerful flutter of her ponytail.

We strain our ears and listen.

"If I were to commit suicide again", she warbles, "I would jump."
The male American specimen next to her nods affirmatively.

We keep on drinking, oblivious to the sound of tomorrow.

The Inglorious Virtual Vocabulary Shift

2010-07-13T08:30:00.000+02:00

The Great Vowel Shift changed the pronunciation of the English language between 1450 and 1750. Monophthongs diphthongised. Vowels underwent and increase in tongue height and changed their quality.

The Inglorious Virtual Vocabulary Shift is taking place as we speak. It reduces our vocabulary to a set of five semi-words: O.M.G, W.T.F., BUMMER, LOL, YAY. Mainstream social-media carriers of non-information. Unanimously loved tools of non-expression.
It is legitimately wiping out the diversity of the English language. I.am.so.sorry.

The World's Grandest Battle of the Sexes

2010-07-09T11:07:00.001+02:00

Brutus vs Phoebe

Vivisection

2010-07-07T10:26:00.013+02:00

Her face was disenchanted. As disenchanted as the face of any customer service official in this country. Her nails bitten, her cuticles red and adorned by curly flowers of dead skin.
Referring customers to the customer service was a best practice she excelled in.
I wanted to know what she was made of so I looked right through her.

(to be continued)

Part II
continued by Ghost Writer P.Iordanov

Incredulity took possession of me gradually, so very slowly it was nearly imperceptible. My intuition seemed to actually beat my brain -- awash with a million tiny chemical reactions taking place simultaneously -- to the finish line; the cold and gripping realisation which caused my eyelids to flutter, and spread a dry film -- half-denial / half-understanding -- over my exhausted, overused retinas.

I was staring (quite rudely, too) at another fembot.

(to be continued by someone who knows...)

Talk to myself

2010-07-06T23:32:00.004+02:00

I talk to myself. Always have. While cycling home from work or taking a solitary walk in the park, I would inevitably reach that comfort zone of pre-behaviorial, anti-social, harmless yet contagious self-dialogue. Whenever anyone looks at me, I pretend I am singing a song, or even better, humming to myself. That's how I get away with it. My quirky human trait.

It's insane really, the pleasure I take in talking to myself.
Yet, as far as I'm concerned, this is strictly and invariably top-secret and it is not to leave the bubble of this blog without my explicit permission.

Lifestream: izzit?

2010-07-03T21:04:00.004+02:00

Lifestream helps you organize your "digital life". It is a place where all your blog entries, twitter posts, flickr photos, youtube videos etc. are stored. Details and explanations of how and where to do that are all over the interNET.
My intention here is to speculate about the challenges of this phenomenon and the lexicon that promotes it.

As much as services like Facebook & Twitter facilitate and dominate our daily life, they also create estrangement and isolation by providing an easy substitute for real communication. Creating a live dossier of your online behaviour and branding this as "your digital life" make this estrangement and isolation legitimate. It institutionalizes the marriage of "digital" and "life". Is this speculative enough? Let's go a bit further.

The Lifestream generally contains the choices made by our Ego & Superego (Forgive me, Freud). But how about the choices of the roaring, hungry, insatiable ID? They are seldom recorded on Facebook or LinkedIn.

I guess, I am simply put off by the big words "Streamline your digital life". Maybe I should check one of these streams and see what the hype is all about.
...Oh, it's just plain html and a collection of hyperlinks.

Much ado about nothing.

Credit

2010-07-02T15:55:00.003+02:00

I bought something on credit the other day. A cherry yogurt, to be precise. I needed an afternoon snack and I had no cash on me. The student working at the canteen was a good fella and I was allowed to walk away with my yogurt promising to pay next time.

Next time was today. The student wasn't working at the canteen anymore and I was tempted to let my debt turn into profit. Yet, I decided to bring it up and it pay it back.
I did not become € 1,50 richer but I did earn a day full of blessings and favourable outcomes. Including a long approving look and a broad affectionate smile from the black lady at the canteen.

It was worth it.

Archetypes and cliches

2010-06-30T08:19:00.006+02:00

Two little boys fighting on the pavement on a sultry summer night is an archetypal image. The assumption that one of them is the victim is a faulty cliche.

I was cycling back from Little Singapore (best Asian meals in town, invitations only) the other night when my vehicle intuitively led me to a juvenile crime scene. Two Moroccan boys were fighting on the pavement on a sultry summer night. Punching holes in the air with their tiny frightful fists. Roaring and rumbling and raging against each other. This wasn't looking right.

I threw myself between them, in my capacity of the Bigger Brother Figure, separating their wrath-infected convulsing bodies. Then I tried to figure out who was the villain and who the victim. They both looked fiery and loaded with anger. But now their anger was directed at me. I wasn't a savior but an intruder. The little boys were fighting just because they could and because they were standing on their pavement and because it was a sultry summer night.

My interference was futile so I left the middle ground and the fight resumed itself instantly. Sometimes, little boys fight just for the hell of it, I thought to myself as I plunged into the night. Faithfully followed by the echoes of fury.

OFF 2010

2010-06-24T20:19:00.023+02:00

Nostalgia for a Past Future

Re-imaging frost patterns, fractured narrative, liquid TV, anti-design festival, break down things to actionable items, N.E.R.T.F.M., eat frogs for breakfast...

A person who’s nice to you but rude to the waiter is not a nice person

...add transparent oxide to the White, iterations of tweaking, Coalition of the Willing: online war against Global warming,

Global Creative Culture Shift, from consumerism to open source & collaboration,

audio-reactive videos, Brand Karma,
the employee as media, I wish I was where I was when I was wishing I was here.

Underpromise, overdeliver

OFF is over. Where are you now?
IB: Fast-forwarded into the Future.

A Past Future?
IB: Time will tell. We project forward from our own past.

Where is the nostalgia?
IB: It’s been put and recycled in writing.

What Lessons did you Learn?
Get things out there. Do not compromise. Share. Borrow. Collaborate. Get involved. Look beyond.

Stranger in Paris

2010-06-24T01:07:00.012+02:00

"Bonsoir, Monsieur", "Bonsoir, Monsieur", the overweight men with greasy ponytails and black suits beckon me in. Let me entertain you, they could have sung if singing was an option.

Yet this personal pilgrimage through the streets of Paris (steep and twisty are the roads to self-preservation) only allows impartial observation.
Chinese girls posing in front of The Moulin Rouge, slightly bent forward, Marylin-style. Freeze smiling, then let go.

Impartial hypnotism takes control. I stand my moral ground. Resiliently.

Running, running

2010-06-20T23:42:00.005+02:00

The cycles of treadmill running are like the cycles of your life.

The first fifteen minutes are hell. Knowing that stopping is not an option is hell. So you try to shift your weight from leg to leg in the most elegant manner possible. You are slowly getting used to your clumsy reflection in the mirror and you keep on looking at the flickering red digits on the display in front of you.

The next fifteen minutes are more comforting and comfortable. You know you can't stop so you'd better make something out of it. You will reach your goal. One way or another. You just need more water and distraction.

The fifteen minutes after that are very exciting. Every second brings you closer to your goal. Your sweat is your trophy and the pain in your legs is becoming sweeter.
15 more seconds, 10 more seconds, 5, 2...
...You are a winner!

From then on, running becomes pure ecstasy. Your aura spreads out like a peacock's tail bringing you forward to the Shrine of Glory. Not your sweat but your splendour is dripping down, leaving golden trails all around you.

That is, if 45 min is your goal, of course.
If not, you just keep on running, running, running, corriendo, бягайки until you know why.

Chinese Temple for Lunch

2010-06-18T15:15:00.004+02:00

Instead of having low-fat turkey and thinly sliced fruit for lunch, I decided to do something different. I left the safety of the office and ventured out into the Wild Wild World around it. Hoping to get a taste of its Wild Wild Wildly overlooked always-be-thereness during my forty-five minutes of Freedom.

This was not a recipe from my many paperback new-age Bibles. It was an instinctive urge of hunger that would not be appeased by false food.
The real food came in a porcelain bowl with engraved Chinese letters. It contained noodles and fish balls and plenty of spicy liquid. This man's Chinese-quarter lunch had begun.

My teeth sank into the crunchy slippery balls filling my taste buds with Delight. Miraculously, my persistent neck pain and the multi-dimensional visualisation of my daily duties vanished in thin air (or in spicy soup). The world did not become a better place but a New place with reassuring always-be-thereness. Observation took hold of me. Writing started happening in my head.

After I finished my meal, I visisted the Chinese temple opposite the restaurant. It was the most logical thing to do. For an eternity of 5 minutes I stood amidst the colourful divinity feeding on the tranquil music and rejuvenating flavours. Surrounded by Gods and Orchids.
I couldn't have asked for a better dessert.

During my peaceful walk back I saw things and places that I had only registered before. My mind's eye preserved them much more accurately than my camera eye did.

I was on time for my next meeting, yet I was alone in the office. My colleagues were still having lunch.

Message on the back of a train seat

2010-06-13T17:30:00.003+02:00

A very unclear picture with a very clear communication.
I got the message.

Spelling hesitance for extra emphasis.

Dear Diamanda

2010-06-11T09:27:00.003+02:00

I still haven't recovered from your performance at Parc de la Villette.
You disturbed the ether and this disturbance was bitter-sweet. The diameters of my remotest recesses expanded.

Thank you for the post-audible vibrations that shook the ground under my feet.
Thank you for exposing the deep shit and deep soulfulness, the burning hell of our inherent Balkanism.
Thank you for raising your finger heavenwards to clear the path for the piercing yells that brought a smile to my lips.

You know, I am a slow recoverer so I may dwell in the comfort of your spell for yet another while.
(No one else can) Sing the blues to me.

IB

Massage

2010-06-08T22:58:00.002+02:00

The contours of pain melt into patterns of pleasure. Projecting all that's relevant beyond the body.

The price is right. Righteousness comes in small packages. From a pair of Chinese hands.

The Smell

2010-05-31T23:18:00.008+02:00

Catching the smell of your favourite director is like catching the smell of your lover.
David Lynch is not the director but producer of Surveillance yet his smell seeps out of its texture.

A little girl whispers in the ear of a make-believe FBI agent: "I know who you are".
The unsaid becomes articulate permeating my nostrils like.no.other.

A.k.a.

2010-05-28T09:28:00.005+02:00

Here you are, on your bicycle, in this quaint little city in Northern Europe. Leather jacket, combats, leather rucksack (accommodating your machine), shiny shoes.

You are cycling towards a destination a.k.a. a Source of Sustenance. You are feeling equipped and compact. A state of being a.k.a. togetherness all over the place.

...Pre-coffee.

A day at the office

2010-05-26T06:48:00.002+02:00

Phoebe

2010-05-22T11:35:00.006+02:00

Phoebe is white, blind and my future room mate.
She is a blast from the past penetrating the mists of time to re-invent the future.

Phoebe...
...is not the girl next door. She is iconic, individual and irregular.

Her otherness is to be admired.

Classical concert

2010-05-18T12:24:00.007+02:00

A kind middle-aged lady invited me to a classical concert in Paris. I didn't know her well but I knew that attending classical concerts added value to her everyday life. We were about to see the Dresdner Philharmoniker performing Strauss and Beethoven. And the Dresdner Philharmoniker was one of the best orchestras in the world, the lady told me.

I enjoy classical music every now and then. However, seeing 50 grim-faced men in black suits playing cellos and violins somehow intimidates me. I do enjoy the music every now and then but most of time I just...drift off and think about my own things. Human nature, I believe. And drifting off is exactly what I did as soon as the sound of strings filled the air. I dwelled upon all sorts of things. The gazpacho waiting for me in the fridge, the iT reunion party that had taken place in Amsterdam the night before, the integrating of the logo into the design I was working on, invoices that were still not paid after months of waiting and so forth. Every fifteen minutes or so the music would distract me from my mundane thoughts flying me to a higher realm for a brief moment, then letting go of me in slow motion. It was all rather pleasant.

In the break the kind lady and I had a glass of champagne. She was smiling at me dreamily.
"Did you love the music?", she asked me.

I decided to answer honestly.
"Well, I wasn't really focussing on the music. I just drifted off thinking about my own things."
I was pretty sure everybody else did the same.

Her smile faded into an expression of pitiful concern.
"It was a very intense experience for me", she said slowly and solemnly. Andante e allargando.

I was standing uncomfortably unable to uncommit my crime. I had prematurely assumed that it was human nature to drift off during classical concerts and think about logos, unpaid invoices and...gazpacho. Yet, I would like to plead not guilty as I did enjoy those brief moments of elevation and eventhough the experience was not intense, it was pleasant. Persistently and profoundly pleasant.
Like the sound of strings filling the air.

Visual entertainment

2010-05-16T14:13:00.001+02:00

Clear-cut enchantment.

Mindfields

2010-05-13T20:34:00.002+02:00

I took a trip to the Mindfields this morning. Of course, I'd seen pictures of them before. Yet, in reality, they are nothing like it.

Their colours are less fuzzy and their brilliance less bogus.

I mean, I know it's not for everybody. You really need to condition your mind accordingly. In all honesty, it was just mindless entertainment to me.

Floral installation

2010-05-11T08:29:00.002+02:00