2001.05.28 ++ CRASHING INTO TUNISIA

2001.05.25 ++ TWO DIMENSIONAL EXPERTISE

Overheard on 3rd Street & Macdougal in reference to tonight's dinner:

"K, I'm gonna go home and open up my Zagats."

Welcome to New York?

2001.05.24 ++ IN HEARTS WE KEEP CONTAINED

Folding her arms and closing her eyes, Hatsumi sank back into the corner of the seat. Her small gold earrings caught the light as the taxi swayed. Her midnight blue dress seemed to have been made to match the darkness of the cab. Every now and then her thinly daubed, beautifully formed lips would quiver slightly as if she had caught herself on the verge of talking to herself. Watching her, I could see why Nagasawa had chosen her as his special companion. There were any number of women more beautiful than Hatsumi, and Nagasawa could have made any of them his. But Hatsumi had some quality that could send a tremor through your heart. It was nothing forceful. The power she exerted was a subtle thing, but it called forth deep resonances. I watched her all the way to Shibuya, and wondered, without ever finding an answer, what this emotional reverberation that I was feeling could be.

It finally hit me some dozen or so years later. I had come to Santa Fe to interview a painter and was sitting in a local pizza parlor, drinking beer and eating pizza and watching a miraculously beautiful sunset. Everything was soaked in brilliant red—my hand, the plate, the table, the world—as if some special kind of fruit juice had splashed down on everything. In the midst of this overwhelming sunset, the image of Hatsumi flashed into my mind, and in that moment I understood what that tremor of the heart had been. It was a kind of childhood longing that had always remained—and would forever remain—unfulfilled. I had forgotten the existence of such innocent, all-but-seared-in longing: forgotten for years to remember what such feelings had ever existed inside of me. What Hatsumi had stirred in me was a part of my very self that had long lain dormant. And when the realization struck me, it aroused such sorrow I almost burst into tears. She had been an absolutely special woman. Someone should have done something—anything—to save her.

But neither Nagasawa nor I could have managed that. As so many of those I knew had done, Hatsumi reached a certain stage in her life and decided—almost on the spur of the moment—to end it. Two years after Nagasawa left for Germany, she married, and two years after that she slashed her wrists with a razor blade.

It was Nagasawa, of course, who told me what had happened. His letter from Bonn said this: “Hatsumi’s death has extinguished something. This is unbearably sad and painful, even to me.” I ripped his letter to shreds and threw it away. I never wrote to him again.

SOURCE: Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami.

2001.05.21 ++ DAYLIGHT THIEVERY

let your pleasures disconnect
then take a moment to recollect
the sights and sounds
that are abound

2001.05.19 ++ CONNECTED AT 26,400 BPS

The world suddenly seems so much slower.

2001.05.16 ++ THE UNTOUCHABLE DEMISE

Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen. When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown figure always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our ways diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened morning after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.

Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some of the parcels. We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs' cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about O'Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native land. These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.

One evening I went into the back drawing-room in which the priest had died. It was a dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the house. Through one of the broken panes I heard the rain impinge upon the earth, the fine incessant needles of water playing in the sodden beds. Some distant lamp or lighted window gleamed below me. I was thankful that I could see so little. All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: `O love! O love!' many times.

SOURCE: "Araby," The Dubliners, James Joyce.

2001.05.12 ++ LOVELY HAPPINESS

I'm moving out to a new place tomorrow.

I'm going to miss the deli around the corner. The chinese restaurant where I always order from. The only homeless man in New York City I don't mind giving money to.

Most of all, I'll miss the view of the city I had from my desk as the sun comes up in the morning. I do regret that I never had a chance to photograph it.

2001.05.08 ++ SEE PROGRAMMING?

D:\_STERN\2001.SPRING.C.PROGRAMMING\

= 34.5 MB (36,241,408 bytes)

C:\Program Files\Borland\CBuilder5\

= 244 MB (256,516,096 bytes)

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop 6.0\

= 108 MB (113,410,048 bytes)

?:\Knowing I've learned a semester's curriculum in two days\

= BYTELESS.

2001.05.07 ++ A QUIXOTIC IDEOLOGY OF BEING

Singularity, The. The Techno-Rapture. A black hole in the Extropian worldview whose gravity is so intense that no light can be shed on what lies beyond it.

The Singularity is a common matter of discussion in transhumanist circles. There is no clear definition, but usually the Singularity is meant as a future time when societal, scientific and economic change is so fast we cannot even imagine what will happen from our present perspective, and when humanity will become posthumanity. Another definition is used in the Extropians FAQ, where it denotes the singular time when technological development will be at its fastest. Of course, there are some who think the whole idea is just technocalyptic dreaming.

SOURCE: The Singularity @ Transhumanist Resources.

2001.05.05 ++ SCHEMING THE PEACE ORCHESTRA

Of the better visions we have of the circumscribed roads of our own pure melodies is a place where we can simply dive into chocolate and the hearts that flow with it.

But there is no light today. We can't live in the cold weather.

At the dawn of light, we'd like to believe we're not on the uniform track, yet we know we are because that's how we play the game. In order to race feet to feet, the slightest chance of a mischance is a possible deduction in time, i.e, a loss, a defeat, a medal missing around our necks and a night full of tears we can't swim in.

But there is no light today. We can't live in the cold weather.

Obviously the flow is not liquid; the solidity is lacking strength. The bodies we love, the ethereal that we hate, all bound in an entity of hope that shines through the window (that we cracked after an eon in defeat).

But there is no light today. We can't live in the cold weather.
But there is no light today. We can't live in the cold weather.