MALOLA diary

Thursday, 31
(peace or war?) a narrative
Amos sometimes gets very desperate at his workplace where he forcebly is faced with people - can be up to fivehundred a day. No physical escape possible, only a monklike meditation that can rescue him from a constant nausea. He has to be friendly, talk nicely to every character, inhale their scent and has to accept that they clean themselves by letting their bad mood flowing on him. Then, officials from neat offices amble along the arena exclaiming joyfully: oh, how beautiful, so many people - we love it and a flattered vanity appears in their eyes. Ten minutes later they are tired of the masses and smugly return to their quiet offices leaving Amos and his collegues doing the dirty work. Furthermore, they suppose workers have fun doing something they never could and would like to do, or let's say only by a state of emergency would they be willing to help out at the front. Moreover, in that latter case, they anticipate a blowjob for their standby.

Wednesday, 30
Of course I know a lot of mothers. Around me there a many woman who have raised children. One of the main differences between them and myself who doesn't have children is that they have a more destinct notion of what is right or wrong. They are more likely to express their being disgusted and dissociate from everything dirty as they had to teach their children to find the proper way.

Tuesday, 29
My mom called on my mobie phone (usually she uses the landline) to check out if I'd come back safely from Paris. She reported how the family spent Christmas at my sister's place who baked half a duck which she had bought completely prepared in the oven. And about her great-grandson...

Monday, 28
To embrace this very day: all the nice things i've met up with like the movie, the catalogue, a drink with a friend, they couldn't reload my batteries to use the metaphor of the robot world. i am not down by law but have been dispirited by a reality that unbosomed a fist i had dismissed afor in favor of a tender hand. However, presumably this is my boxing day.
.................................................................................................
Yogi Tea saying Joie de Vivre: La voix de votre âme est la respiration.
---------------------------
today my A useful Dream has arrived... last date of arrival was announced for the 16th. Obviously coming from Canada - stamped Calgary Public Library 2011- seems to be the reason for its delay.
--------------------------
some time ago our neighbour gave us things for Gambia. She also had some DVDs she asked me if i wanted them. i took one Down by Law. I thought that one is for sure worth to be rewatched. i remember that when i watched it for the first time almost thirty years ago I didn't enjoy it really. Now i am watching it and love it. Three great actors and a wonderful director.
-------------------------
My stomach is my stomach... I mentioned that. To expand that lore I might say my body including mind and soul is my body carrying it's very history written on it by everythng it has experienced. What is adaptive to everything and everybody. The cooccurrence of different bodys and their histories sometimes reveals a disequilibrium of the ability to let swing and leave open what will happen but to dominate the one or other.

Sunday, 27
I think... but at the same time there is is a denial to express what I think. Who can be interested what I think? Why should I write about what I think? Sounds like a big question... Yeah, actually, it is a big question. Reality or dreams? No, I am on the side of reality. Even I love my dreams. I need my dreams. Without them there would be nothing. But reality proves my reliability.

Tuesday, 22
Correct, the other day has arrived - not a suprise, isn't it?

Monday, 21
It is like I don't want to go bed today. Please don't tell me nobody why. Tormorrow is another day.

Sunday, 20
After work at museum went to cinema to let my mind slow down a bit. Carol, based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith The Price of Salt (nice title). About a filthy rich woman and her coming out as a lesbian in the fifties of Manhattan. A very blurred movie, light fare. But didn't regret - just enjoyed beautiful Cate Blanchett.

Friday, 18
In a conversation with a Swiss native we started talking in Swiss dialect. Normal, as we found ourselves in Switzerland. But as the conversation got more intense I switched to High German (Schrift Deutsch how Swiss call it. Some name it as foreign language.) and the other followed more or less automatically, because I began to dominate our discussion - no wonder is it my mother tongue (it also happens that but only a few and mostly academics claim their High German stronger than mine what gives me a feeling of being reduced to a person of non-verbal communication). The longer we talked the more fluently was his German. At the end of the day what is almost a saying it doesn't matter which language we talk, as long as we understand each other...

Monday, 14
Susan Sontag, 1972 (p 327) : French unlike English: a language that tends to break when you bend it

Sunday, 13
Despite all my attempts to fight and find back my easiness am full of aggressions against myself about my weakness, my stupidity, my search for a perfection i should have known i cannot achieve. A lost day. A day full of sickness. On my walk in the parc suddenly Stanley Kubrick's movie A Clockwork Orange came to my mind. No, not a nightmare but conscious reflecting about opening somebody's eyes violently. In the beginning of the walk I was nervous about people looking at me suspisciously. After two rounds I went better and felt people didn't look at me hatefully, but with sympathetic regards. Really I got my lesson. This time not just a miscalculation but a whole world collapsing over my head.
-----------------------
Yesterday at dinner my friends criticised me heavily for going too slow, not pushing forward my preparations for Gambia, distracting myself with that my translation. We also talked about to work on being happy. That is what she said, she would do. I am also on trying freeing myself from feelings of guilt. And I am happy. I love Africa. I love to go there. To change my life. But it is still three months of work here before to work there.
I am positive - there is no reason to worry. It doesn't make sense. And I don't want others to worry about. That is what I told them as well. Actually I planned this Sunday to be my free day. What means going out and having a walk in the parc. Sunshine.

Saturday, 12
Finally, my conclusion was wrong. i should have asked before I started, because Simon Njami told me he didn't consider the book to be published here on my blog a good idea. So anybody who would like to read the whole book in German has to be patient till we've found a publisher to issue African gigolo in German. I hope we can make it. i love the book.

I asked and informed him about attaching my translation here. And I came to the conclusion I just have to do it and all the questioning was redundant.
(put the pdfs back)
Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5

Friday, 11
i changed my mind. I removed my translation to be read here. i haven't consultet the author yet. I feel I cannot do it without his permission... and I am too afraid to ask him to tell the truth.

Thursday, 10
While translating I take the liberty of applying a syntax appropriate to the author's. I don't follow conventions of speling a lot. Sometimes I am not sure about the right spelling, so I use the one that comes to my mind. I think the hyphening oftenly is set wrongly. It can happen that I may not understand and translate correctly. In case that occurs I apologise to the author. However, it's not a translator's work, but an aritst's.
Chapter 2

Wednesday, 9
Here and then I try to diminish the leftovers of my party last month. But after four beers I am finished. The good old times of binge drinking are over.

Monday, 7
Someone asked me about my translation. I almost forgot. To start somehow here Chapter 1 (not available for mobiles and tablets)

------------------
i wonder... if the psychoanalysis I underwent for six years deploys still.
Yesterday, at work I made one wrong step which led to chaos. When closing the cash accounts I needed to make a conversion of credit card payments. Nothing difficult, but my faulty reasoning was instead of doing a subtraction I did an addition. In other words instead of removing a wrong entry I added a further mistake what I had to adjust again. However, as people were waiting to close the museum I had to hurry up and finally my head blacked out and I left work with that discontented feeling of having done badly. I came home more or less depressed and have woken up this morning with that mistake in my mind.
How comes that making a mistake is going so deep and I need that very long time to get rid of the feeling of gulit? And why is it when I am proud of a work I feel ashamed? I think the problem is I never freed myself from the pressure of doing bravely in sense of law and bourgeois culture. A protestant education that doen't allow fun in life. I disturb myself, because I have in mind there will be disturbance, so in a way I train myself to be prepared for punishment.

Saturday, 5
My show is on at the museum where I've been working for long time. My pictures are good and look nice. Not many people talk to me about my exhibition, but about Greeks and Romans. Very interesting to observe how they pass picnic shyly stealing a glance at. An African scene next to the in my eyes oversized ancient Greek sculptures. But visitors don't come to see my Africa. I understand.
The museum is about to getting closed by a government's decision in terms of budget cuts. By my pictures I hopefully give support to my friends who are working there and who's future is questioned by that very decsision. At the same time it is a farewell exhibition and a tribute to Antikenmuseum Basel where I've worked for thirty years (with some stoppings) as well as in prospect to my new future in Africa.

Friday, 4
you see, i've had a lot of stomachache lastly. i decided it is my stomach after all. what seems to be easy, is not, because some think it belongs to them.
------------------
I think rituals are important. During my time at artschool around 1980 to present rituals as happenings or kinda installations was avant garde. Most of those works consisted of fire and natural materials. When I look at those artists nowadays they are managers styled like business people. i wonder if they consider rituals as necessary as back in the days. We, we lost our rituals. There is only the question of how to survive, here in the center of Europe. Back at home, them, they hopefully kept them.

My partner, friend or husband - whatever stigmatisation you would like - who left me yesterday for some where to prepare his stay in Gambia, questioned my intelligence. He said I would stubbornly stick to the idea of getting help from certain prestigious persons for my project in Gambia. As i by now should have realised that they were not interested at all I better looked for new solutions. Like doing it my own way not needing any canonical approvement... Indeed, high time that I set the course.

SS 2/17/70
After pages of analysing her relationship to her friend Carlotta she writes:
Back to the earlier point: for Carlotta knowing her own feelings is not, at any given moment, an essential problem. It can become a problem, though, if she's asked to put her feelings into words - quite rightly, in a way - she feels when she talks about her feelings always carries the taint, or temptation, of generalization. Talk about feelings itelf locks feelings into place (at least it appears to do that). Her problem is not the identification of - or contact with - her feelings, but what to do about them - which of the several actions they could prompt she could take. She usually sees several possibilities of action, because she experiences her feelings as mulitple, divided. The problem is easier only when action is experienced as a demand from outside her private life.
---------------------------------------
I'm in exile (America) from my excile (Europe)
Abandoned- Struggling not to feel abandoned.

Tuesday, 1
dream: Feeling troubled and not accepted among artists I considered Gambia too small and too difficult to establish an internationally acknowledged art institution. I decided to look for another African country to settle.
Something that seems to occupy me, obviously (dreams work out and reveal subconsciously recorded thoughts and emotions. They never betray me). A hint, not to mind mocking voices and false friends, but the serious ones, who take part by encourageing me, not by challenging and naysaying.

archive > diary > december 15

The Gambia Thursday, 31 (peace or war?) a narrative Amos sometimes gets very desperate at his workplace where he forcebly is faced with people - can be up to fivehundred a day. No physical escape possible, only a monklike meditation that can rescue him from a constant nausea. He has to be friendly, talk nicely to every character, inhale their scent and has to accept that they clean themselves by letting their bad mood flowing on him. Then, officials from neat offices amble along the arena exclaiming joyfully: oh, how beautiful, so many people - we love it and a flattered vanity appears in their eyes. Ten minutes later they are tired of the masses and smugly return to their quiet offices leaving Amos and his collegues doing the dirty work. Furthermore, they suppose workers have fun doing something they never could and would like to do, or let's say only by a state of emergency would they be willing to help out at the front. Moreover, in that latter case, they anticipate a blowjob for their standby. Wednesday, 30 Of course I know a lot of mothers. Around me there a many woman who have raised children. One of the main differences between them and myself who doesn't have children is that they have a more destinct notion of what is right or wrong. They are more likely to express their being disgusted and dissociate from everything dirty as they had to teach their children to find the proper way. Tuesday, 29 My mom called on my mobie phone (usually she uses the landline) to check out if I'd come back safely from Paris. She reported how the family spent Christmas at my sister's place who baked half a duck which she had bought completely prepared in the oven. And about her great-grandson... Monday, 28 To embrace this very day: all the nice things i've met up with like the movie, the catalogue, a drink with a friend, they couldn't reload my batteries to use the metaphor of the robot world. i am not down by law but have been dispirited by a reality that unbosomed a fist i had dismissed afor in favor of a tender hand. However, presumably this is my boxing day. ................................................................................................. Yogi Tea saying Joie de Vivre: La voix de votre âme est la respiration. --------------------------- today my A useful Dream has arrived... last date of arrival was announced for the 16th. Obviously coming from Canada - stamped Calgary Public Library 2011- seems to be the reason for its delay. -------------------------- some time ago our neighbour gave us things for Gambia. She also had some DVDs she asked me if i wanted them. i took one Down by Law. I thought that one is for sure worth to be rewatched. i remember that when i watched it for the first time almost thirty years ago I didn't enjoy it really. Now i am watching it and love it. Three great actors and a wonderful director. ------------------------- My stomach is my stomach... I mentioned that. To expand that lore I might say my body including mind and soul is my body carrying it's very history written on it by everythng it has experienced. What is adaptive to everything and everybody. The cooccurrence of different bodys and their histories sometimes reveals a disequilibrium of the ability to let swing and leave open what will happen but to dominate the one or other. Sunday, 27 I think... but at the same time there is is a denial to express what I think. Who can be interested what I think? Why should I write about what I think? Sounds like a big question... Yeah, actually, it is a big question. Reality or dreams? No, I am on the side of reality. Even I love my dreams. I need my dreams. Without them there would be nothing. But reality proves my reliability. Tuesday, 22 Correct, the other day has arrived - not a suprise, isn't it? Monday, 21 It is like I don't want to go bed today. Please don't tell me nobody why. Tormorrow is another day. Sunday, 20 After work at museum went to cinema to let my mind slow down a bit. Carol, based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith The Price of Salt (nice title). About a filthy rich woman and her coming out as a lesbian in the fifties of Manhattan. A very blurred movie, light fare. But didn't regret - just enjoyed beautiful Cate Blanchett. Friday, 18 In a conversation with a Swiss native we started talking in Swiss dialect. Normal, as we found ourselves in Switzerland. But as the conversation got more intense I switched to High German (Schrift Deutsch how Swiss call it. Some name it as foreign language.) and the other followed more or less automatically, because I began to dominate our discussion - no wonder is it my mother tongue (it also happens that but only a few and mostly academics claim their High German stronger than mine what gives me a feeling of being reduced to a person of non-verbal communication). The longer we talked the more fluently was his German. At the end of the day what is almost a saying it doesn't matter which language we talk, as long as we understand each other... Monday, 14 Susan Sontag, 1972 (p 327) : French unlike English: a language that tends to break when you bend it Sunday, 13 Despite all my attempts to fight and find back my easiness am full of aggressions against myself about my weakness, my stupidity, my search for a perfection i should have known i cannot achieve. A lost day. A day full of sickness. On my walk in the parc suddenly Stanley Kubrick's movie A Clockwork Orange came to my mind. No, not a nightmare but conscious reflecting about opening somebody's eyes violently. In the beginning of the walk I was nervous about people looking at me suspisciously. After two rounds I went better and felt people didn't look at me hatefully, but with sympathetic regards. Really I got my lesson. This time not just a miscalculation but a whole world collapsing over my head. ----------------------- Yesterday at dinner my friends criticised me heavily for going too slow, not pushing forward my preparations for Gambia, distracting myself with that my translation. We also talked about to work on being happy. That is what she said, she would do. I am also on trying freeing myself from feelings of guilt. And I am happy. I love Africa. I love to go there. To change my life. But it is still three months of work here before to work there. I am positive - there is no reason to worry. It doesn't make sense. And I don't want others to worry about. That is what I told them as well. Actually I planned this Sunday to be my free day. What means going out and having a walk in the parc. Sunshine. Saturday, 12 Finally, my conclusion was wrong. i should have asked before I started, because Simon Njami told me he didn't consider the book to be published here on my blog a good idea. So anybody who would like to read the whole book in German has to be patient till we've found a publisher to issue African gigolo in German. I hope we can make it. i love the book. I asked and informed him about attaching my translation here. And I came to the conclusion I just have to do it and all the questioning was redundant. (put the pdfs back) Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Friday, 11 i changed my mind. I removed my translation to be read here. i haven't consultet the author yet. I feel I cannot do it without his permission... and I am too afraid to ask him to tell the truth. Thursday, 10 While translating I take the liberty of applying a syntax appropriate to the author's. I don't follow conventions of speling a lot. Sometimes I am not sure about the right spelling, so I use the one that comes to my mind. I think the hyphening oftenly is set wrongly. It can happen that I may not understand and translate correctly. In case that occurs I apologise to the author. However, it's not a translator's work, but an aritst's. Chapter 2 Wednesday, 9 Here and then I try to diminish the leftovers of my party last month. But after four beers I am finished. The good old times of binge drinking are over. Monday, 7 Someone asked me about my translation. I almost forgot. To start somehow here Chapter 1 (not available for mobiles and tablets) ------------------ i wonder... if the psychoanalysis I underwent for six years deploys still. Yesterday, at work I made one wrong step which led to chaos. When closing the cash accounts I needed to make a conversion of credit card payments. Nothing difficult, but my faulty reasoning was instead of doing a subtraction I did an addition. In other words instead of removing a wrong entry I added a further mistake what I had to adjust again. However, as people were waiting to close the museum I had to hurry up and finally my head blacked out and I left work with that discontented feeling of having done badly. I came home more or less depressed and have woken up this morning with that mistake in my mind. How comes that making a mistake is going so deep and I need that very long time to get rid of the feeling of gulit? And why is it when I am proud of a work I feel ashamed? I think the problem is I never freed myself from the pressure of doing bravely in sense of law and bourgeois culture. A protestant education that doen't allow fun in life. I disturb myself, because I have in mind there will be disturbance, so in a way I train myself to be prepared for punishment. Saturday, 5 My show is on at the museum where I've been working for long time. My pictures are good and look nice. Not many people talk to me about my exhibition, but about Greeks and Romans. Very interesting to observe how they pass picnic shyly stealing a glance at. An African scene next to the in my eyes oversized ancient Greek sculptures. But visitors don't come to see my Africa. I understand. The museum is about to getting closed by a government's decision in terms of budget cuts. By my pictures I hopefully give support to my friends who are working there and who's future is questioned by that very decsision. At the same time it is a farewell exhibition and a tribute to Antikenmuseum Basel where I've worked for thirty years (with some stoppings) as well as in prospect to my new future in Africa. Friday, 4 you see, i've had a lot of stomachache lastly. i decided it is my stomach after all. what seems to be easy, is not, because some think it belongs to them. ------------------ I think rituals are important. During my time at artschool around 1980 to present rituals as happenings or kinda installations was avant garde. Most of those works consisted of fire and natural materials. When I look at those artists nowadays they are managers styled like business people. i wonder if they consider rituals as necessary as back in the days. We, we lost our rituals. There is only the question of how to survive, here in the center of Europe. Back at home, them, they hopefully kept them. My partner, friend or husband - whatever stigmatisation you would like - who left me yesterday for some where to prepare his stay in Gambia, questioned my intelligence. He said I would stubbornly stick to the idea of getting help from certain prestigious persons for my project in Gambia. As i by now should have realised that they were not interested at all I better looked for new solutions. Like doing it my own way not needing any canonical approvement... Indeed, high time that I set the course. SS 2/17/70 After pages of analysing her relationship to her friend Carlotta she writes: Back to the earlier point: for Carlotta knowing her own feelings is not, at any given moment, an essential problem. It can become a problem, though, if she's asked to put her feelings into words - quite rightly, in a way - she feels when she talks about her feelings always carries the taint, or temptation, of generalization. Talk about feelings itelf locks feelings into place (at least it appears to do that). Her problem is not the identification of - or contact with - her feelings, but what to do about them - which of the several actions they could prompt she could take. She usually sees several possibilities of action, because she experiences her feelings as mulitple, divided. The problem is easier only when action is experienced as a demand from outside her private life. --------------------------------------- I'm in exile (America) from my excile (Europe) Abandoned- Struggling not to feel abandoned. Tuesday, 1 dream: Feeling troubled and not accepted among artists I considered Gambia too small and too difficult to establish an internationally acknowledged art institution. I decided to look for another African country to settle. Something that seems to occupy me, obviously (dreams work out and reveal subconsciously recorded thoughts and emotions. They never betray me). A hint, not to mind mocking voices and false friends, but the serious ones, who take part by encourageing me, not by challenging and naysaying.