MALOLA diary

Thursday, 31
Schauspielhaus Basel: Die Bacchen
----------------------------
A friend recently told me that in a class for unemployed she had learned that wages of beautiful women were 30% higher than those of their ugly colleagues who did but the same work. In other words if you aren't born a beautiful female your chance for a dignified life seems to be small. But who defines beauty as an absolute constant ? Is it a democratically ascertained policy of a people mature to judge independently ? Or are we, in the so-called Western World, are all manipulated by a prescribed notion of what beauty means that the hegemony of historically and traditionally recorded ideals imposes on every single human life like a standard mask ? No, I wouldn't say so. Of course every individual has got the chance to blast that standard beauty mask and reveal a character that debunks the former as bland, plain and shallow.

Wednesday, 30
Kultkino Atelier: Chocolat

Monday, 28
a memory: Easter 1984. I was in my fifth year Fine Arts, but I didn't make ends meet. I was still searching, trying different techniques, surviving. I freshly came back from Switzerland where I had stayed for two weeks at an artist's community. Few days after I had arrived in Basel we went for skiing in Valais. I loved going downhill to the sound of my Walkman. Dreaming. Enjoying. I remember that one of the favourite hits at that time was Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Relax. I dived into happiness for a short time. Back in Hamburg, placed by the students' job service, I grabbed a service job at a family garden restaurant over Easter. Sunshine, but a kinda sticky atmosphere. The restaurant's owner couple didn't get along very good. He was unfriendly and kicked her around. i didn't like him. Hungry and poor I complained about the leftovers the restaurant's guests returned and started eating them. The woman scolded and said that people talked above their meal, hence parts of their saliva could be on the food. What made me finally stop. The following day I didn't go again. I told them I was sick.

Saturday, 26
Yeah indeed, it is not about a lyrically respectively metaphorically dispayed rendering of pain that describes the agony of life's abstracts, but a very physical and inevitable pain that leaves every poetically shaped perception appear almost ridiculous and taunting. In times of physical suffering beautiful words seem to lose their elegancy.

Thursday, 24
May writing free me from physical pain? I don't know, it is only hope that can vindicate this very idea. Since two weeks i've been trying painkillers. Today I've seen a doctor. From my body movements, she told me, a serious disease couldn't be diagnosed. Lets try some stronger killers. I wonder. Yeah, i know i carried a too heavy load. But, why did it happen now, in this time of a fundamental change in my life? Did I want to prove that I could do it? Anyway, the pain is there and i have to go forward as I've planned. I don't believe in God, but during nights I catch myself praying to a superior power to ask for a relief of a pain that determines my life. I cannot sit, I cannot lie, and even walking seems to be an agony. Yesterday was my last working day and I am supposed to be happy about the newly achieved autonomy. Instead a disappointment because of confined activity takes place. Though I ween for a healing in Gambia.

Tuesday, 22
Terror in Brussels.

Monday, 21
Any movement in terms of changes bears it's difficulties. Positionings different from their past definitions have to find their way into an enlightened conscience to give changes a chance.

Sunday, 20
Almost everybody asks me how my preparations are going on or, why is it that i am still here or tell me about your plans in Gambia, or they tell me their plans about visiting me, but by now nobody has asked me: Can I help you?

Saturday, 19
Since a while I am suffering from severe backache. As I quit my job and look back, I feel like I sold myself to bureaucracy (Bureaucracy unhappily is the rule of nobody and for this very reason perhaps the least human and the most cruel form of ruler ship - Hanna Arendt in Responsibility (1964)) for decades under the pretext of making my living. I tried hard to keep my drive on behalf of independence and self-determination. But the pain tells me differently. For those outside I had been everybody's darling, because my spirits were gratuitous; as a clerk I was already paid by the government. For the people inside I was recalcitrant, voicing what nobody wanted to hear. Sitting on the fence I am concerned about my newly gained liberty - my backache inhibits a sudden gasp of relief as well as a proceeding in the very pace I had in mind.

Wednesday, 16
Sounds good:
WHAT THE TORTOISE MURMURS TO ACHILLES, On Laziness, Economy of Time, and Productivity

Tuesday, 15
I've just spottet a slogan on a packet of papers... interesting
LICK IS THE NEW LIKE

Thursday, 10
I don't do a lot at the moment. I don't even know if ever I do lot. Most of the time I think I should do more. Anyhow, pictures (photos) I often do quickly, impromptu, not reflecting. Then, after, when I look at them I see things I didn't chose, i didn't want, I don't like. Though in that very detail that my camera took in a certain moment of her linear time perception things were in an order of a substantiality determined by countless components that are there if i pictured them or not. Something I have to accept. Of course there is always the possibility to delete and keep only a choice: I don't want this, but I want that. At times, I know there is no better reality than that one I encountered without choice.

Monday, 7
I find myself in a kind of interface. No more reality here, but not there yet. Cutting my roots, fading, everything is preparation. Overcoming a no-man's-land of time. It is like my energy flows to nowhere, into the nil. I am deadly tired.

Saturday, 5
In his memoirs published in 1975 Tennessee Williams writes about depressions:
The direction of my life was away from both social and sexual contacts, not by conscious choice but through the deeper and deeper retreat into the broken world of my self.
I arrived at the nadir of this long period of depression when I began living totally alone. I forget the year and the season of the year but instinct drew me back to New Orleans and I made a last solitary effort to pull myself together. By this time, I could still make such an effort but it was always doomed to collapse. I believe a depression is classified as "clinical" when the victim stops moving, eating and bathing. I never descended to quite that point, but despite my efforts to go on, I think I was aware of death's attraction. The most painful aspect of the depression was always an inability to talk to people. As long as you can communicate with someone who is inclined to sympathy, you retain a chance to be rescued.
Yes, depressions are painful and in order to prevent an isolation of the self any attempt to communicate should be undertaken. It must not be a deep analysis of the being, but a small talk would do to come back to a common reality that leaves you moving on. And don't overvalue yourself, I mean don't take yourself too seriously, life will end anyway, but think rather in terms of humanity than in social recognition and classification. Consider other people's life and problems and difficulties you could never guess. Then your own impediments become small and harmless and by implementing that very inauguration you probably receive an energy boost. Nothing matters and everything is possible - as a start for going into detail that finally matters, because then the closer look comes out to be exciting.
T.W. later about freedom:
To be free is to have achieved your life.
It means any number of freedoms.
It means the freedom to stop when you please, to go where and when you please, it means to be voyager here and there, one who flees many hotels, sad or happy, without obstruction and without much regret.
It means the freedom of being. And someone has wisely observed, if you can't be yourself, what's the point of being anything at all?

Friday, 4
Susan Sontag in her notebook 7/19/79
A failure of nerve. About writing. (And about my life - but never mind) I must write myself out of it.
If I am not able to write because I am afraid of being a bad writer, then I must be a bad writer. At least I'll be writing.
Then something else will happen. It always does.
I must write every day. Anything. Everything. Carry a notebook with me at all times, etc.
I read my bad reviews. I want to go to the bottom of it - this failure of nerve.

Tuesday, 1
Talking on the phone with my mother about my daily struggles she replies: I hope it won't be a fight (in German Kampf) I am shocked, because the German word is a lot heavier than the English and reminds of a book I am scared of and I never want to be related to at all. So everything I will seek not let it be a fight, but a smooth something. Further, someone recently has said to me: You cannot run away from your identity. And actually I don't do, but I claim to feel and call home wherever I am and not being reduced to just feel and call home where I've been born.
-------------------------
I love the refusal.
Feeling free to say NO and nobody complains.

archive > diary > march 16

Changes Thursday, 31 Schauspielhaus Basel: Die Bacchen ---------------------------- A friend recently told me that in a class for unemployed she had learned that wages of beautiful women were 30% higher than those of their ugly colleagues who did but the same work. In other words if you aren't born a beautiful female your chance for a dignified life seems to be small. But who defines beauty as an absolute constant ? Is it a democratically ascertained policy of a people mature to judge independently ? Or are we, in the so-called Western World, are all manipulated by a prescribed notion of what beauty means that the hegemony of historically and traditionally recorded ideals imposes on every single human life like a standard mask ? No, I wouldn't say so. Of course every individual has got the chance to blast that standard beauty mask and reveal a character that debunks the former as bland, plain and shallow. Wednesday, 30 Kultkino Atelier: Chocolat Monday, 28 a memory: Easter 1984. I was in my fifth year Fine Arts, but I didn't make ends meet. I was still searching, trying different techniques, surviving. I freshly came back from Switzerland where I had stayed for two weeks at an artist's community. Few days after I had arrived in Basel we went for skiing in Valais. I loved going downhill to the sound of my Walkman. Dreaming. Enjoying. I remember that one of the favourite hits at that time was Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Relax. I dived into happiness for a short time. Back in Hamburg, placed by the students' job service, I grabbed a service job at a family garden restaurant over Easter. Sunshine, but a kinda sticky atmosphere. The restaurant's owner couple didn't get along very good. He was unfriendly and kicked her around. i didn't like him. Hungry and poor I complained about the leftovers the restaurant's guests returned and started eating them. The woman scolded and said that people talked above their meal, hence parts of their saliva could be on the food. What made me finally stop. The following day I didn't go again. I told them I was sick. Saturday, 26 Yeah indeed, it is not about a lyrically respectively metaphorically dispayed rendering of pain that describes the agony of life's abstracts, but a very physical and inevitable pain that leaves every poetically shaped perception appear almost ridiculous and taunting. In times of physical suffering beautiful words seem to lose their elegancy. Thursday, 24 May writing free me from physical pain? I don't know, it is only hope that can vindicate this very idea. Since two weeks i've been trying painkillers. Today I've seen a doctor. From my body movements, she told me, a serious disease couldn't be diagnosed. Lets try some stronger killers. I wonder. Yeah, i know i carried a too heavy load. But, why did it happen now, in this time of a fundamental change in my life? Did I want to prove that I could do it? Anyway, the pain is there and i have to go forward as I've planned. I don't believe in God, but during nights I catch myself praying to a superior power to ask for a relief of a pain that determines my life. I cannot sit, I cannot lie, and even walking seems to be an agony. Yesterday was my last working day and I am supposed to be happy about the newly achieved autonomy. Instead a disappointment because of confined activity takes place. Though I ween for a healing in Gambia. Tuesday, 22 Terror in Brussels. Monday, 21 Any movement in terms of changes bears it's difficulties. Positionings different from their past definitions have to find their way into an enlightened conscience to give changes a chance. Sunday, 20 Almost everybody asks me how my preparations are going on or, why is it that i am still here or tell me about your plans in Gambia, or they tell me their plans about visiting me, but by now nobody has asked me: Can I help you? Saturday, 19 Since a while I am suffering from severe backache. As I quit my job and look back, I feel like I sold myself to bureaucracy (Bureaucracy unhappily is the rule of nobody and for this very reason perhaps the least human and the most cruel form of ruler ship - Hanna Arendt in Responsibility (1964)) for decades under the pretext of making my living. I tried hard to keep my drive on behalf of independence and self-determination. But the pain tells me differently. For those outside I had been everybody's darling, because my spirits were gratuitous; as a clerk I was already paid by the government. For the people inside I was recalcitrant, voicing what nobody wanted to hear. Sitting on the fence I am concerned about my newly gained liberty - my backache inhibits a sudden gasp of relief as well as a proceeding in the very pace I had in mind. Wednesday, 16 Sounds good: WHAT THE TORTOISE MURMURS TO ACHILLES, On Laziness, Economy of Time, and Productivity Tuesday, 15 I've just spottet a slogan on a packet of papers... interesting LICK IS THE NEW LIKE Thursday, 10 I don't do a lot at the moment. I don't even know if ever I do lot. Most of the time I think I should do more. Anyhow, pictures (photos) I often do quickly, impromptu, not reflecting. Then, after, when I look at them I see things I didn't chose, i didn't want, I don't like. Though in that very detail that my camera took in a certain moment of her linear time perception things were in an order of a substantiality determined by countless components that are there if i pictured them or not. Something I have to accept. Of course there is always the possibility to delete and keep only a choice: I don't want this, but I want that. At times, I know there is no better reality than that one I encountered without choice. Monday, 7 I find myself in a kind of interface. No more reality here, but not there yet. Cutting my roots, fading, everything is preparation. Overcoming a no-man's-land of time. It is like my energy flows to nowhere, into the nil. I am deadly tired. Saturday, 5 In his memoirs published in 1975 Tennessee Williams writes about depressions: The direction of my life was away from both social and sexual contacts, not by conscious choice but through the deeper and deeper retreat into the broken world of my self. I arrived at the nadir of this long period of depression when I began living totally alone. I forget the year and the season of the year but instinct drew me back to New Orleans and I made a last solitary effort to pull myself together. By this time, I could still make such an effort but it was always doomed to collapse. I believe a depression is classified as "clinical" when the victim stops moving, eating and bathing. I never descended to quite that point, but despite my efforts to go on, I think I was aware of death's attraction. The most painful aspect of the depression was always an inability to talk to people. As long as you can communicate with someone who is inclined to sympathy, you retain a chance to be rescued. Yes, depressions are painful and in order to prevent an isolation of the self any attempt to communicate should be undertaken. It must not be a deep analysis of the being, but a small talk would do to come back to a common reality that leaves you moving on. And don't overvalue yourself, I mean don't take yourself too seriously, life will end anyway, but think rather in terms of humanity than in social recognition and classification. Consider other people's life and problems and difficulties you could never guess. Then your own impediments become small and harmless and by implementing that very inauguration you probably receive an energy boost. Nothing matters and everything is possible - as a start for going into detail that finally matters, because then the closer look comes out to be exciting. T.W. later about freedom: To be free is to have achieved your life. It means any number of freedoms. It means the freedom to stop when you please, to go where and when you please, it means to be voyager here and there, one who flees many hotels, sad or happy, without obstruction and without much regret. It means the freedom of being. And someone has wisely observed, if you can't be yourself, what's the point of being anything at all? Friday, 4 Susan Sontag in her notebook 7/19/79 A failure of nerve. About writing. (And about my life - but never mind) I must write myself out of it. If I am not able to write because I am afraid of being a bad writer, then I must be a bad writer. At least I'll be writing. Then something else will happen. It always does. I must write every day. Anything. Everything. Carry a notebook with me at all times, etc. I read my bad reviews. I want to go to the bottom of it - this failure of nerve. Tuesday, 1 Talking on the phone with my mother about my daily struggles she replies: I hope it won't be a fight (in German Kampf) I am shocked, because the German word is a lot heavier than the English and reminds of a book I am scared of and I never want to be related to at all. So everything I will seek not let it be a fight, but a smooth something. Further, someone recently has said to me: You cannot run away from your identity. And actually I don't do, but I claim to feel and call home wherever I am and not being reduced to just feel and call home where I've been born. ------------------------- I love the refusal. Feeling free to say NO and nobody complains.