Hirngespenst

EXTERIOR: Close macro focus on green liquid soap within a complete abstract field of vision: at first there is just a color, a glossy liquid color, the camera moves backwards while panning, and then recognition of actual shapes is gradual within colored liquid soap, greenish, in it is mixed various trash items:

Camera pans across:
noodles, coffee grounds, beer cans,  ciggarettee butts, small scraps of half legible russian pornagraphy, views of decayed pieces of pornographic images, small bottles of kräuter likor, orange peels,
cough drop wrappers, used condoms, and other bizzare found-objects  all swimming together in this soup of a greenish liquid.

This is one, very long, sweeping shot.

Camera pans left to reveal a pair of feet with holes in the socks, they are partially soaking in this flotsam of color, and long, hideous,
toenails sticking out of them.
Further pan to reveal the body of DRUNK PROPHET.
DP is asleep. A hideous appearance. unshaven, long beard with food crusted in it, bubbles of spittle form on his mouth and he breathes
out. The air reeks of stale beer. A stain in his pants where he has soiled himself.
DRUNK PROPHET is asleep in an alcoholic haze and the camera pans back to show his full figure.

CUT: INTERIOR. Bedroom of UNKNOWN GIRL.
The UNKNOWN GIRL rests in a pink, or feminine colored bedroom. On her walls are posters of horses. The room has a peacefull feeling. Camera pans across the sheets, lighted very subtle from a faint, warm source. At first like the orpening shot, the vision is abstract. Camera pans left to graudally reveal the sleeping figure of UNKNOWN GIRL. Pans back to show her figure from chest high. In her sleep she is experienceing strongly powerful emotional dreams. Her expressions are troubled, but at the same time possibly filled with good emotion. The facial expression are confusing in that they do not represent any one emotion.
QUICK ZOOM onto face of UNKNOWN GIRL. Her eyes open with strong emotion and she jolts up in bed.
(Musical overlay is a crescendo ending with the jolting awake)

FAST CUT: DRUNK PROPHET  also jolts awake surrounded by trash. Liquid soap and noodles cling to his head and beard. The emotion is abstract. Camera pans right down below his feet. Among the trash and flotsam is:
MAGIC GLASSES (or magic object) (MUSIC sound effect.)

EXTERIOR. GUDRUNSTRASSE STAIRWELL. INSIDE BUSHES.
CUT TO: UNKNOWN GIRL writing in a notepad. CLOSE on camera of the words she is writing. AUDIO is very clear LOUD scratching of pencil on paper. Camera pans back to show the notebook is hanging from a string around her neck.  This is a close chest shot to emphasize that she wears the paper Schreibblock on her neck. She is sitting inside the bushes near the DRUNK PROPHET, spying on him. The light is greenish and beautiful and half-dark inside the shelter of the bushes.

CUT: DRUNK PROPHET fumbles with the MAGIC OBJECT and it is unclear  to the UNKNOWN GIRL what it is. UNKNOWN GIRL reaches into her purse and pulls out a set of binoculars.

CUT: View from Binoculars. DRUNK PROPHET examines the OBJECT and has a profound, nearly religious look of pleasure on his face. He attempts to stand up but falls back into the Schleim and trash and green pile of noodles and beer cans.

CUT. UNKNOWN GIRL seems alarmed and looks at him cautiously. She crawls forward army style as if if within a trench or foxhole sneaking towards enemy lines to get a closer look at the DRUNK PROPHET.

CUT: DRUNK PROPHET succeeds in standing up, and still with the magical expression on his face walks down the narrow Weg with fast cars and traffic speeding by him headed into the 10th district.
He crawls into the hole in the fence of a BAUSTELLE.

CUT  UNKNOWN GIRL follows him into the hole. All of this action occurs very slowly and there are beats in time sequence to create tension in the act of following him.

CUT. Inside the Baustelle. Various chaos of a construction site with huge piles of dirt. There is a Baumschule next to it, and the chaos of the Baustelle is merged with the trees. DRUNK PROPHET sits before a small pile of smoldering ashes and cooks the bones of a fish.

CUT: The view of the sky through the bones of the fish. Camera is abstract. (MUSIC SOUND is very abstract, with tension.)

UNKNOWN GIRL continues to crawl army style towards the DRUNK PROPHET and manages to come VERY close to him without being seen. She is visible scared by being in his proximity. She is within the Baumschule, and thus the shor has the feeling of a Maerchen - the girl within the man-made forest.

MONALOGUE of DRUNK PROPHET.............He speaks to himself a rambling, philisophical monolouge.

CUT: A mouse is near the feet of the UNKNOWN GIRL. she tries to move her foot to scare it away, and in doing this attracts the attension of DRUNK PROPHET.  He moves towards her and discovers her hiding place. Much tension here. It is a feeling of her being in danger. Intense emotion on the face of DRUNK PROPHET.

CONVERSATION between the two. During this is is discovered by the audience that the UNKNOWN GIRL is a deaf mute. The conversations is a serious of signs and gestures made by the DRUNK PROPHET. she answers him by writing in the pad, which it becomes clear now that this is her only way of speaking. At first there is much tension and confusion, in that the auidence does not yet understand the content of the gestures made by DRUNK PROPHET. The gestures and sign language are nearly violent.
The tension in the scene gradually vanishes as the communication between the two becomes more clear and less abstract.

CUT. NIGHT. LATER. The light of a camp fire is illuminating both sitting next to one another. The same mode of communication, but this time tender and friendly. UNKNOWN girl writes in notepad, and makes him smile when he reads it. He answers with more gestures, and with various OBJECTS used to tell a story. DOLLS - TOYS - BIZZARE OBEJCTS are used like puppets to talk to the UNKNOWN GIRL.
More philisopical dialoge between the two using this backwards method. The DIALOGE between the two is about pure emotion and feeling.

DRUNK PROPHET pulls out from his pocket the MAGIC GLASSES. He gives them to her and she puts them on.

CUT; Quick sequence of images of the DRUNK PROPHET before in the past as viewed through this abstract vision of UNKNOWN GBIRL. He is clean shaven, thin, wearing nice clothes. Almost unrecognizable. These are fast, abstract images coupled with abstract MUSIC. It is possible that many of the images are  highly decayed and scratched polaroid photosgraphs, thus giving the feeling that this was sometime long ago this is overlayed with........

VOICEOVER MONOLOGUE of UNKNOWN GIRL. She describes the path that led to the pile of noodles and green slime. All of it is in a whispered, quiet voice. Serene Mood. Overly tragic music.

CUT She takes the glasses off. Both of them have an expression of pure JOY on their faces. They hold the MAGIC GLASSES in their hands, clasping each others arms together. A LIGHT glows from inside their hands.

CUT. Using the water from the pot used to cook the fish. UNKNOWN GIRL begins to shave the beard of the DRUNK PROPHET. Gradually his face appears. All of this is done in the instense JOY that they both feel. When he is shaved, she rinses his face. She slowly places the MAGIC GLASSES on his freshly shaven face........

CUT. FAST IMAGE SEQUENCE of the deaf UNKNOWN GIRL. The sequence is abstract but shows the inital trauma that caused her to lose her speech and hearing. This is overlayed with...............

VOICEOVER OF DRUNKEN PROPHET. He describes the events that led to her becoming deaf. (again, rough outlines of images.) His voice is in a whispered tone. Part of the images are closeups of Polaroid snapshots of her before or during the time when she became deaf.

CUT: The two are bathed in Total Happiness. It is as if something magic has entered their world and everything is changed. Camera shows very close their faces and the corresponding emotions. It is nearly kitschig in the facial expressions. Very intense music or sound overlay. Gradually however the music is replaced by..........

STIMME OF UNKNOWN GIRL's MOTHER CALLING HER NAME:
...... ........   ....... ....... The sound of the name echos with more and more reverb and the music fade.

One sees that the UNKNOWN girl can sense of hear the voice calling her, and this almost breaks the INTENSE HAPPINESS of the scene of them together. She motions to DRUNK PROPHET that she has to go now. Her UNSEEN MOTHER is calling her. There is tension as they both stand up in the firelight. DRUNK PROPHET takes her by the hand and leads her into the darkness of the Baumschule. Camera follows them into the fake forest, but gradually loses them in darkness.

END.

Wanting light. There is a horror in some kinds of darkness that is akin to a mad screaming or blowing ones brains out. When the concept of horror as a basic wordless emotion comes across you, it is almost the same as the polar opposite of sensing divinity in your surroundings. But not as a light/dark polarity, the wanting of light is so basic and simple that it needs no words, or human summary. I was collecting shells from the beach and stacking them atop one another so that they would vibrate when I played the old piano. Althought the action itself was trite and overdone, the conical shape of the curved dead houses of long dead spineless sea creatures formed a deeper meaning to the music I was making. I no longer saw myself as a shell collector, but a purvaoy of light in its lightest, purest form. Music passed like all dead things through time and dissapeared in memory. Pencil shavings and pink rubber eraser flotsam wiped off a page. I began to find more meaning though in going to the sea with shaven head, sun upon it, the brown tame mouse in my pocket, and piano music as my end goal. I was approaching an older age which was not quite near thinking of death, but certianly jaywalking near its striped crosswalk. At night I would drink that cheap wine sold in bottles with fisch and seashells on the printed label, sweet and meant to be eaten with fish or mussels. Cats that scouraged the beach were lured to the house by the scents of broiling fish in the kitchen. Open windows brought in the sea air and let out the aroma of oil and spattering batter. And later the shells would vibrate from the piano, and often thunderstorms would come into the windows which I refused to close, even when the rain blew in and soaked the ffloorboards. The darkness was sliced open by flashes of lightning and in this second of light I experienced both things. The dark and its horrid absence of humanity, where nothing lives and breathes, where the air inside the seashells screamed a kind of silent death and lunge into total insanity. And the other side also came forth, in these very same moments. The piano beneath me became and knew all of this, and I felt very much like a caneless cripple who forged on touching the sides of a hallway, its walls leading though to things that humans are not meant to see. In the flashes of light, the piano music took a turn towards a godless divinity, not yet fathomed by flesh and human brain. It was melded with the horror and dark, and also so, so hungry. It was hungry for the brightest light, but wanted both. It wanted to be beyond human sight and the limitations of the cornea opening and closing, beyond mere nightmares which digested bad human energy. The conical pile of shells which I had slowly over several years harvested from the sea also wanted this duality and seemed to speak back to me as I played. In the morning, I would go back to aging and time and normal phases of darkness and brightness. I would go back to my life as a shell collector and forget everything I had played the night before. Bt other things would retain the music and vibrate even in total silence, in a place where measurement and time are simple fools crying wolf.

I found a job writing the tiny paper fourtunes sold within the curled, shell-like cookies, or so I thought. The typewriter which was washed up on the beach seemed destined for the purpose. The factory that loomed over the beach used to be a tire factory, but now doubled as a noodle manufactory, and a small anexx made of wood harvested from the old shipping docks, formed the cookie section. They needed messages, this I knew. The old message system dug throuh old books of watery new age philosphy and reversed the sentence structure in random patterns. Then these would be typed in tomato-red faded in onto ribbons which were cleverly inserted just as the dough of the cookie was cooling and still soft, by a machine. I sat many hours smelling the fish cannery odours blend with the semi-vanilla cookie warmpth and salt water all together. The cats were drawn westward towards the cannery, but I remained east near the noodle factory. There were flour-coated old men who arrived and departed in shifts from the iron gates, and I imagined their collective dreams. What do old men who make noodles all day dream of. Escape from flour. A flour-less world void of break and starch. A city made of golden chimneys which are gilden in brass and copper and become fire-colored upon sunset, and in the morning. A place without noodles, near Malta, with a poor public transport system which oozes creaky noises and is filled with dark skinned women.
So I started typing the fourtunes of the factory workers, on the backs of wrappers from the cannery. Whole boxes of sardine labels with misprinted silver ink representing print-deformed fish, could be found in the dumpsters.
On these I typed out the dreams of the workers. All were past middle-aged and of faintly Asian heredity, all wore flip-flop shoes and marched into the noodle factory wearing Orwellian blue jumpsuits. So their dreams were thus hard to fathom. I had shaved my head that summer, and kept a mouse in the the chest pocket of a herriingbone blazer made of pure lambwool and ridiculous in the climate I had brought it to. I carried a copy of Robert Burns in one of the side pockets, and in the other the Sutras by Patanjali. When I found the typewriter on the beach, half rusted out and its keys claws of dead crabs that did not want to reach upward anymore to stamp paper, I had been walking for four days without stopping. I had lived on a diet of Poki (a raw salted fish) and green tea. I had walked in circles near the lava rocks where the cats lived, *thinking* of nothing and forgetting my previous life.
There is a space near the fence of the cannery where trash blew in a kind of conical dance. New trash from the jumpsuited noodle workers lunches would often join the old, sun-stained trash in a kind of lyrical dance. The fence though, would kind of filer the big peices and keep them there like a kind of club or society of oversized clumsy oafs, not worthy of the sea. The smaller peices would drift out into the ocean and be freed. Among the clumsy flotsam I found a toothbrush. Blue plastic handle, worn to shit. Its bristles were yellow and it was caught in the chain-link fence, no longer a part of the wind dance.
I took it as a sign and used it to clean the rusty letter keys of the typewriter. Some fish oil served as lubricant, and soon I had most of the tiny letters clean of orange grim. The mechanics of the machine though were shot to shit. Most of the letters stuck, so it was like typing your way through a bad dream. I had to push some of the levers up towards the sardine labels, and give them a little TAP onto the paper, then ull the lever back down to rest in its cozy cradle with all the other sick alphabets. Soon, thoughm the whole process became a bit easier. As I saw on the beach in my wool coat, sun baking my bald head, I began to write the futures of the factory workers. I would send the mouse as a messanger into the factory, to deliver my wisdom to the cookie section, where they wrote that Eastern generic bullshit. I would give them real fortunes. Ones that would make the stumps of amputees itch, and men suspect their wives of dreaming of other noodle workers. I would write, things which would creep into their ears and dreams like insects. The magic would return to the factory. The cookies would sell because of my wisdom. I would live not longer amoung the cats in the shadows of the fortune cookie factory. They would invite me inside one day, washing my feet with scented oils, and I would sit down at a beautiful, new, functioning typwriter, and write fourtunes. I would writes fourtunes, which after all, is my lifes work.

It all begins with a magic object. It could be anything, a book, a tea kettle, but it draws the people who find it together in a bond which they cant comprehend. It is found in the weeds of an abandoned lot. or it is something that can be consumed and is in limited supply, like a magic bottle of vodka, or a box of magic salt. The manner in which it changes the lives around it form the basis of a film. To drink or swallow the substance gives the finder a pure feeling of love and joy connection with all objects around them. They hear and smell more acutely and for a moment all of their mistakes in the past are absolved and seen for the positive trajectory they caused into a new existence, instead of leading to false paths. The gutters flow water upwards and gurgle brackish water back up into the streets instead of swallowing water downwards. The trash of this city floats aimlessly and dream-like in the winds, as if softly moved to a proper destination different from the original metal can it was put into.

a normal, ordinary bottle of vodka begins to glow with a greenish light from within. Its that cheap vodka they sell made in Lithuania, with a generic name like Rachmaninoff. The area where the 3rd district meets the tenth is a kind of no-mans land of unfished construction sites which go on forever seemingly. The bottle allows an unlikely love to blossom between an old drunk prophet and a young beautiful deaf girl.

Part of the culinary fantasy would be the kitchen which stretches far beyond what the eye can see. It is more of a labyrinth than a functioning room designed for cooking. Though one could prepare anything at all in parts of the space, with endless copper pans and utensils, there are other parts and other sections of rooms which seem eccentric in their purpose, and hold furnishings that border on culinary function, and almost do not really belong there at all. These areas are mixed within everywhere however, and are not quite sanitary. Some of the objects are dusty antiques, whose purpose may have been lost over time. The numerous cabinets hold objects which reflect this chaos. You can wander in an out of the saces, and not quite find what you need to make a meal. In other areas there is perfect order and a clinical cleanliness, with modern appliances and ladles, mixers, etc. It is thus like the fruit orchard with wild pines encroaching on its borders, a mixture of forest and orchard. The kitchen harbors these old secrets and they press in upon the perfect, clean areas. When it rains you could hide in one of the chaotic spaces; cookbooks are stacked celing high with no discernable order, and somehow the odd tomes of Homer and Greek philosophy have seeded their way into the culinary bibliothek. Beyond this more cabinets with no only books, but dry goods that puzzle all sense of reason. It is time that did this to the kitchen, spindles of time passing through collecting of objects which lost their purpose or connection to the modern work of cooking. Guests can sit at tables in the clean areas and watch some delicious fare be prepared, but a mouse will always be somewhere nearby.

drinking with several Poles last night. The theme of smashing beer glasses in the street, nes which are stolen from Austrian bars.....I have around 10 -15 glasses at my house which I have stolen. There was a tradition for one of the Polish guys t break glasses stolen from the Viennese pubs by throwing them in the street. In that famous narrow street where Beethoven once walked, he threw a glass and it shattered in a loud rain of glass. But as we turned the corner, five seconds later, we heard the answer; a totally drunk girl had just dropped her beer glass with half full beer in it. The two parties recognized each other and ran up to one another to embrace. It struck me that the coincidence was hilarious. The drunk girl came up to me later and slapped me in the face for n reason. I smiled and said...do it again. later in the bar I noticed her swaying across the room, and hear the tinkle of shattering glass as she knocked over several shot glasses. I like these people.

The space near the window in my room where the 1850 piano sits. There is a small alcove of dusty space where nothing ever goes. In it I have stored broken piano parts harvested and saved for possibly use in my piano collecting future. This morning I thought, "this" space in particular has a signature feeling which I would want to cultivate. The house in Catalan near the ocean in Marseille where I dreamt of living - to grow many of these kinds of spaces in a home would be easy to do.....lots of old pianos are bought for the feeling they give places close to one another. The spaces *inbetween* the old instruments are priceless. A small red velvet pillow is placed there, and when it rains into the sea, a morning spent there between the pianos. numerous pianos form the building blocks of a kind of labyrinth - changing the space in an ld house. It would be a pardise for cats to wander in and out of, walking on the keys in the middle of the night to form that peculiar kind of tune that only random cats feet can make. fill the room with mice and cats and you have a kind of sonata of hunting.

The noise was deafening, swelling from the walls. Water poured down from somewhere far above. One could think that to be seen in this cellar would provide a kind of entrance, a visible substance, holding the bronze baritone saxaphone, leading the minds in the audience towards a pure chaos. It sounded like the dissonance of a city colliding with a barrier, all of the lives and hopes pouring out through a mesh screen, and being changed on the other side. Suffering from lung damage* - it was hard to maintain the constant power that was needing to reach this other side beyond. A suitcase which traveled through Kansas. Inside it was the horn. Wheat and tall brown grasses blew on the side of the train as it passed on its way to a city which would define a kind of new paridise of ruination. The music became more clouded and hopeless. Sometimes, sitting underneath the train, there was a moment when it was close to not wanting to move away when it heard the whistle. The suitcase stood underneath the wheel, steel against cheap paper cardboard, and the brass intestines with their external veins and leather pads surrounding the valves would be crushed under the train. The music was overwealming. It rose from underneath the train and seeped under the seats of all the passengers. In the Kansas night, a thread of pure horror coming out of the brass valves, buttons of mother of pearl were pressed, sweeping away all of the tension which had gathered from the last city, the last girl.

I woke up craving specific foods: A rare bloody steak, an ice cold beer and French fries. Hard to find in Vienna! I ended up not working at all....for this craving was more emotional than hunger itself. I walked to my favorite Cafe nearby, willing to settle for a beef gulasch and those marvelous big glasses of tap beer..but they were closed. Then I kind of aimlessly wandered, knowing I would not get my rare steak. I ended up at Burger King - the faint desire for something American guided me there. They have a "Bourbon Whopper" - on the illuminated ad there is a bottle of bourbon behind the cheesburger image. Standing in line, I strained to read the writing on the faux-bottle image. "Product of Burger king."
I guess there is a certain kind of longing or homesickness that sets in after several years of living away from the USA - certain things creep under the surface of the skin and build a nest of missing there....

The kind of slow lure of the blanket of Vienna, as a city that covers and makes one cozy, encourages baby-making, setteled life; this Vienna slowy seeps down upon me even though the rebel in me still seeks Marseille and wants it bad, so bad. Though I knew that this last trip to France was just a short vacation, deep in my city-psychic-sense I also knew it was a place in my future. Very much like the move to New Orleans so many years ago: I had no idea what it would be like, knew noone and had zero friends there....nevertheless i moved there on a motorcycle and with a bag of tools and rolls of microfilm with everything I had ever written on them.

Provence in general....Avignon....the southern coast.. it all spoke to me. Now back in sleepy bean-bag Vienna I find myself planning another trip...this time it will be with the sole intention of not leaving. I save Money in a little jar now for this purpose. It occured to me...i sell like 10 violins every month....to start taking 10 percent from each sale and hoarding it for the move to France. I speak no French. I know no-one....Perfect.

To grow old by the sea.













As i near 40...i find myself needing a "plan" . for what? to justify that i am doing something worthy?
A violin shop next to the sea. Inside it, a cat wanders about, or sleeps in the shop window. There is an amazing esspresso machine to serve coffee to prospective buyers of my violas. Also, evenings with wine tastings. In the 7th district of Vienna there is a book shop owner to has the right idea. He sells old books, but also sells organic wine, has numerous wine parties inside the books shop. The place smells divine. A violin shop that smells like the sea, like old books, varnish, lavender oil, excellent coffee.

My life in Vienna has fallen into a kind of pleasant, sleepy mixture of working, varnishing, carving, then napping, playing piano all day long, then drinking local wine. sleeping. I have been cooking amazing meals for myself, alone. Its wonderful. I lost a lot of weight not drinking so much also. My face looks quite different when I am not drinking.
I am happy, mostly. As I ascend the stairs to my workshop, I often feel a kind of surreal, settled pleasure. Pleasure in knowing the place is so beautiful...my achievement...
And my pianos await me.:



I have been working on playing Satie on piano....as well as starting the Goldberg Variations.
Playing Bach is extremely difficult. His genius dawns upon your fingers and spirit at the same time, as you trace out and decifer the spiderweb of notes, which fit PERFECTL>Y upon one another. Life is so short....one could really spend half ones life playing the Well Tempered Klavier...and it would not be a wasted life.










I have been writing long poems in ink inside every viola...romantic poems to ex-girlfriends. One day the violas will be opened, and the luthier 100 years from now will be shocked, embarased into blushing by the pornographic-romantic script written inside. Desciptions of love and cum and sweat. ha ha.

Who dares to wear a light felt or straw hat and seduce the Mistral. The winds come from cold sources and reaches everywhere. I was sitting at a table at an outdoor cafe and watched the Mistral *whoosh* away a 5Euro bill from the table next to me. The man calmlz stood up and walked toward the wind, which carried the bill higher and higher, in dancing circles several feet above our heads. The Mistral blows trash into violent circles, trapped it savagely in fences. The garbage is illuminated and animated into a new nomatic life. Ive spend several days in a windless Marseille, walking aimless through the refreshingly filthy streets, smoking often, sitting on stairway in dangerous quarters drinking canned tonic water and smoking Dunhills as the city moves past me. Today, in the 5th arrondisment, an aging prositute stood motionless in the overcast street where I was sitting, above her a violinist played a Partita from J.S Bach and filled the air with a poorly intoned trail of notes. I take to walking very slow lately, moving at the speed of a cripple. I do not drink during the day time, but spend it eating street food and wandering without any aim, just a sense of the search for beauty. This is a city of endless accidental beauty. Because the szstem of collecting and disposing of trash is so lax, it flows from the puny bins and pours over onto the space between the two white iron bars which contain it. I have seen wonderful treasure coming from these bins. Marseille is a trash collectors wet dream, and dumster divers paradise. I have seen in four days enough ghetto luxery furnitre to fill my phatasy apartment. It would be somewhere North of Catalan, or in the stairway/streets with no car traffic near Rocas-Blanc, and the room would reek of seawater and antiques. I have found my dream city. Ideas for several novels have come to me. The place makes me want to slow down my drinking, instead fishing in the evening, and writing again.
Although I do not care anymore about writing, Marseille brings me back to the dream of it again. Just a single typewriter and a bottle of Grappa.

****

The ledgend of the, frolicing, Saphhic stepsisters seen through the world on various beaches as a kind of hallucination or archetype of imagination. The images cannot digest themselves out of the mind; lay dormant in the intestines of the brain, and emerge once again whenever near any ocean.

***
A city of drifting trash, flotsam pours from the houses, and the seaseless winds carry it everywhere, floating high in the air in a dance. There are secret places; corners and endstations of fence and concrete - these are cataloged photographicly over long periods of time. The images compared with one another. It is a city of maritime trash. Marseille is its model, but the imaginary place takes a new phantastical accelerated level of accumulation of trash. The color-faded images on the cartons and packaging, the old tins of fish and octopi, are trenchons for the mind to grasp, their absolutle beauty captured and frozen. The women in this wind-swept city are hatless. The filligreed archetecture is often worn smooth from the sea winds.
***

The back corners of the Rex float den has rotting wheels and wood from 1930. In one corner "dead mans corner" a mardi gras worker died after falling off a float; I always had an aversion to working there..it seemed darker and colder,etc. I found a cassette tape of gene Lovves Jezebel in the back of burger king, and i played it over and over until Mouse and Reynard were begging me to stop. The only slim trace of responsibility I have had in the past five years was that job; one came and left when one pleased, and worked mostly unsupervised making flowers and leaves from paper, goldleafing them, and hanging them up. Henri just made an appearance once a week to marvel at our work. I woke up this morning thinking of the time capsule that we created inside one of the rotting props which hangs in the celing of the den. Its a piece of wood that we all signed in some way with pencil, with a cartoon drawing of Wayne, and threw up inside the 20 year old decayed prop. It gave me pleasure to imagine someone 20 years later finding it. Also awoke with a certain plasure in remembering the various kinds of shadows and brands of light which existed there. Holes in the tin walls patterned the sunlight in curious ways across the paper decorations. I spent so many years in that building, that I have much of these light-moods mapped in my head. What is it to remember certain details about something which will be certainly lost? They will find the square peice of wood, with my name written on it, but never know the light which I remembered.


The portal in "Beer and More" (a small beeer pub on the Linzerstraße 14th district) extends both to the right and left sides. The wall to the left dissolves into a cascade of blue light, similar to the cheap blue bulbs at the footrail inside the bar.

I have been meaning to scan the old, battered notebook thhat I have been writing in since May 2009 - carried in my orange Julius Meinl shopping bag now for an even year - its because I almost lost it. I thought i left the little stinky bag in Cafe Einhorn in a blur of alcohol. Inside it: my ipod, a copy of Il Padrino - the Godfather in Italian, my favorite steel ball point inkpen that writes with blue ink, the emegency tablet of bayer asprin that dissolves in water and is reserved for the occassion of waking up in a strange house with a headache- and the notebook. The thing is battered beyond belief, the pages worn and stained from being rained on. the notes inside it are not profound - random jottings and flotsam of mind this past year. the thought of losing it though really struck me. I have not been so interested in writing stories lately...i just change my focus i guess..work more on concrete things. It strikes me that I want to live a life which is based more in reality..i.e wood and violins and painting in ink, earning tons of money to buy a grand piano, livingg in really nice, spacious rooms flooed with sunlight, eating in really fancy gulasch joints in Vienna.... etc , instead of having my world revolve around the self-worth one gets from developing these beautiful phantasies. But for an entire year all of any of this phantom mental worldd would have been lost....so i must scan it.
Last night, sitting drinking a beer at the Cafe Zipp with my brother, I remembered I have many of theese notebooks....over the paast five years. They are reserved for unimportant thought...random shit...but take on a lot of meaning in the end.

I made her fingers from boxwood and rosewood. I carved them from tree branches I harvested from her forest, the trees that surrounded her house. Each branch was curved as if she was beckoning me to come to her. the digists were seperated by small dowels, hinges which could move, and tiny wires made them firm. When she played the piano the wooden tips clicked across the ivory keys and made a rythmic percussion, tick tack. The notes sounded out into the darkness and like little wooden feet walking on cobblestones could be heard. Her hands were nearly cut off as punishment for rotecting me during the war. But because she lied so well and held her silence, told perfect tales, the fingers only were removed. I had thought of mechanical fingers, like clock parts, from tin and iron, but I have no eperience with these. I consulted the clockmaker for the designs and had heim draw them out in ink. then I went into the forest and found the branches that suited her. the birds were wild that evening, fighting in the drizzling rain over nothingness. the nests were wet and sopping with rain, the blue eggs glazed with cold moisture above. I sawed off these apendages and my heart ached for her touch, and to hear the music come pouring forth from her again. Late nights i worked at carving and made mistakes, misshapen fingers which in their error and curvature told wrong stories or pointed towards other men in her past or future. It was when i finally found her proper fingers in my mind that I captures her heart. The inked drawings from the clockmaker were only a crude plan, for her knew nothing of her heart. One morning, in the dawn light, I attatched the tin perfect fingers one by one onto the tiny stumps, and they fit perfectly, anf if I were giving myself inside her. She wiggled her new fingers and brushed them for the first time in ages across my face, moving down along my chest. the bird were wild again on this morning, thrilled by the hatching of their eggs. They were out seeking worms for their babies. She put a single wooden finger in my mouth, and closed her eyes, feeling my tounge explore the tip for the first time.

An aviary in ones house. A proper aviary is too boring, so I want to build one out of mangled birdcages, used and broken cages wired together to make a gigantic space for tiny birds. Inside countless branches would reproduce a fictional nature, a small forest. On the ground would be threads and used bobbins, swatches and bits of cloth, buttons, or the remnants of a bomb blasted tailors shop for the birds to scavenge materials for nests.

`*
Potato delivery in Wien. A waif in lumpy clothing with a soot-stained face goes door to door in those nieghborhoods near the Prater where prostitution is so common, knocking on various door and pushing a cart laden with lumpy sacks. She sells sacks of potatos but with a special spurprise in each bag, (just like with cracker jacks carmel covered popcorn one finds a secret surprise in every box) - and the relashionship between her and a old man who lives in one of those buildings. The surprises in his sack that he buys every week become more and more spectacular. Although the girl has a lumpy, boyish shape, and wears the costume of a Rauchfangkehrer, secretly she is a angel underneath the soot and shapeless clothing. The layers of potoato dirt, when washed finalyly from her face reveal the most spectacular beauty that the world has ever seen. A long hot bath melts away the potato dirt. Just like when you wash a filthy potato, you reveal its eyes and blemishes, its brown perfect skin.
*
I saw the most saddest girl in Vienna the night before last on the Ubahn. She wore a black leather jacket and had very old hands. Her face showed concern and worry and sadness, and the emotions which were moving through her were obvious from the outside reflected in it. I watch her, totally entranced. I looked at her hands and saw no ring. Women in Hietzing her age are simply not unmarried unless there is a good, proper reason. She walked with an odd gait, as if onetime crippled, but had somehow recovered and defeated the invisible disease. I wanted to tell her she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, but I thought it would be cheap and meaningless to be sad in an underground train with the various idiotic passengers overhearing the confession.
*
Lately I have taken to transforming crappy, comunist era Czech violins (made under Russian control of the violin factories in Eastern Europe) into spectacular beauties. It is something i do at night instead of drinking too much. The slow transformation gives me great pleasure to watch. And then something that was bought from a gypsy crate for 20€ with no sound, no voice, no spirit, becomes a singing woman with a new facelift, a new pair of breasts, a new life.

Fathered thirty three wicked daughters. It was not for the faults of the mothers, as each daughter came from a different mother, they were mere victims, vessels of milk, mammals. The meglaomanic dreams and pushing forward to conquor time represented a yearly cylce of phase which then spread out forward, and folded in upon itself. Those thirty-odd years were strange seasons divorced from wintersummerspringfall - mischlings of time, nebulae which formed concentrated segments of a life while at the same time having no discernable edges. All of the daughters grew up in the same large house whose celings were papered with hummingbirds and lotuses. This gray stone monster took up several fields and was surrounded by deviant orchards. All of the daughters were named starting with the letter A. Adeline, Addy, Asheline, Anöme.... all would spread out into the world and create more evil.

The ravens inherit Wien. For along time I observed how they dominate the pigons in subtle ways; by taking the prime ffod sources within the city, showing the smaller, less noble birds to the side. One winter, its becomes a small war to extinguis the precsence of pigeons forever. Bloodied bird bodies lay littered through the streets, pecked away to pulp and feathers. The Viennese see this everywhere, on their windowsills, in front of their cafes, and a small effort to clean up the dead bodies is organized from the common workforce normally used to keep the streets free of snow. During this same winter, the Ravens lay thousands more eggs in the thick forests and vinyards surrounding the city. Soon the city is dominated by the "huge black chickens" - On every rooftop crowds of ravens look down pon the streets. They openly steal food from the plates of humans dining at outdoor cafes, and sometimes attack humans outright. I am the only human they love, the King of the Ravens.

The bad weather is affected not by the scent of the evening, or by the clouds and pressure in the air but instead by the moods of one, single little girl living in an apartment just outside the giant metropolis. The snow is independant of the weather itself, and falls on its own in powdery tiny flakes always. Droning machines operate day and night to remove it from the streets, otherwise the population would suffocate beneath the sugary powder. But the real moods, the real alcoholic bouts and storms of emotion between the city dwellers and their tides of lovemaking, comes from inside the single kernal of power with her. A city made of sugary icing, marble and cake, reeking of peppermint schnapps and warm rum drinks, cinnamon, fried meats. The night life is dazzling with endless dark holes to crawl into. Once inside, a sense of subdued purple curtains, and behind them a sudden illumination, the curtains open opon a brilliant world of liquor and glowing liquids behind glass. Coal and woodsmoke are burning in every house. Children are fed lamb for breakfast.

*
Last night inside Cafe Anzendgruber I sat drinking beer and reading Siebenkäs with the greatest pleasure. I noticed for the first time that the Reclam edition, (cute little yellow volumes) has numbers for every five lines on the page, so that, like a bible, Richter can be read with the utmost care. I realized then, that one must read him slowly, like honey, feeling the effect of every turn of the volutes and spines, endless threads of content. I looked into the adjoining billiard room, where several old men were playing pool. A sense of quietude came over me. The comfort of the Wiener cafe world, scents of a busy kitchen operating unseen behind old, wooden walls, the cold glass of beer, and the emmersion into dead mens thoughts.

Looking upon the little turkish box of keks with its lavishly colored decorations, the tinest little finely made cookies made deep into the night, the wee hours of the night. to think of all the stillness, all the places which are unloved and shadowy, corners of chimneys, behind rubbish bins, the chins and armpits of the stone gargoyles perched high in a dark viennese night. The thought of the stillness alone drives one mad; the sheer boredom of a sleepy city on a Sunday evening. I went out and sat in a dingy watering hole, a matte black bar filled with Yugoslavian men, with an apt name given the lack of female prescence: "Pandoras Box" - and drank away two glasses of really nice Czech pilsner. A girl came in, ordered a small beer and sat quietly nibbling from a dish of peanuts, wondering why I was ignoreing her. I want to remain imagining these hidden, evening things. Those that are in the evening unseen by people, but nevertheless powerfully *there* -

Imaginary quarters of a city which build themselves in the mind. Yesterday by accident I found a part of Vienna I had not remembered ever being in before. When one exits U4 Längenfeldgasse and turns right, and walks for a long way through very boring ugly streets, past with stone communist housing blocks whose dirty beige paint from the 1930s ruin any possibly cheeriness of the street - and keep going further, suddenly one pops into a few series of blocks which must have been bombed in WWII. I found myself totally in marvel, I did not recognize any street names, block after block of strange cafes, shops, faces. Suddenly transported into an imaginary neighborhood of Vienna where Nate does not exist. To invent these places, or to change them around, change their clothing, their facades and odors transformed somehow.

The Naughty Fawn made me drink Vodka today.

A hidden part of the city, accessable only from an inlet near the abandoned vineyards, these few streets had enchated Otto when he first discovered them as a boy. Then the fields surrounding were thriving and smelled of Wienmost. Ravens now had taken possession of the wildly growing vies and thrived off the yearly grapes from unkempt vines growing ....... through oneanother far from their stakes. Because of the new railway, the little Dorf was not dependent on connections to the rest of Vienna, and subsisted solely upon the wood harvested from the thick forests which surrounded it. A train came daily and dropped off delicacys to the people there, whose thoughts were made of wood, whose bodies smelled of woodsmoke, whose lives were merely Holzhandle. They loaded the freshly cut logs onto the Zugwaggon, wood which would warm elegant bodies faraway in beautiful parts of the city.

Hacking is connected by a railway, and is larger. The areas south of Ob.St.Veit are made smaller, as being only forest and wild orchards, and Liesing becomes a kind of phantom world of scraggly tree orchards, forestry and logging, and Weinbau. Otto´s mansion exists in many places, but is built upon a vast pear tree orchard which in his later years after the death of his parents becomes vagrant and unkempt. Sometimes Otto lives in a Kabinettzimmer in Leopoldstadt, a tiny room once used as servant quarters, in order to be closer to Amöne. There is a period where they are inseperable. He pays for the giant flat perched high in the air, and at different time both sisters have lived there. The place is a kind of playground for the imagination. what happens when you place a beloved thing inside this container, this palace of wooden paneled walls and antique paintings. Although there are several rooms, he prefers to hide in the servants quarters.


Whenever Otto wandered through Hacking he could trace the scent of Albine from the little tufts of smoke that rose from terracotta chimneys.



To feel myself drawn into Amöne´s world, and then asking, beckonging: What IS she just exactly.


Wilder than her sister, took paths which led to bad ends, but always seemed to recover from them, even flourish from the bruising that the rotten choices had brought upon her. Thus she rises far above ..... and wins the affections of Otto. Both of the sisters were taught to play on a half broken Ottavino, one hewn from the seasoned wood inside the clock tower, and Amöne used this little shape of an instrument, with its sour bass notes, and clickity clackity keys on the higher registers - to play out her heart to him. The music had decided long ago, when Albine was asked to improvise one evening. Hourds of übermödische hinterländere waited in the windoweaves, stuffed like Treibgut into the overly heated Leopoldstadt flat, until they were balanced on the windowsills, about to fall out into the night. The music came forth from Albine, but her fingers pushed out the melodies as if reciting text from a book everyone knew. Phrases leap out, and were complex and beautiful, but well worn and not her own. Her black hair fell partially down on the keys made of bone and boxwood; one of her notes played upon her hair. The audience applauded weakly, politley, and Otto came and lifted her from the little Spinette,two hands pushed under her armpits, as as lifting a child, and kissed her ear. then Amöne sat down at the Ottavino: silence in the rooms. It smelled of wine and roses, glasses shone under the chandeliers, all eyes on the scruffy shape sitting before the keyboard, dissproving of her worn dress, and long black tresses tangled within her vest. And that ridiculoous English cap! But when she began tto play every heart oozed from its ribcage and slid down into the lower, unknown areas near the stomach, where one feelss shaken after nearly dying, or being in love, or hearing such wonderful things. Amöne teased and snatched beautiful melodies, thrashed them, here violent, and there tender and merciful as if stroking the head of a puppet. One could not follow the logical thread of the improvisations - it was moreso a muscial Puppenschauspiel with a beautiful but unseeable end. Amöne was the master of the little dolls which crept into the ears of the stupid, endlessly vapid audience. the little Bauerntöchter has them completely under her control, mesmerized as within a dreamy cocoon. The music stopped finally after a descending flourish from the high clicking keys down to the low, groaningly ungestimmte notes, and the applause was suddenly deafening. Some were near to tears, and saw Amöne turn round on the little round stool to face them through a moist vision; her black unkempt hair flowed down to her waist, a statue made from pale marble but with color in its cheeks. She heard nothing on this night, only saw Otto moving towards her, visibly shaken and stirred with emotion as he bent down to plant a wet kiss on her mouuth, bringing up his long coat at the same time to shield this kiss from view. For these few seconds, inside his coat, she belonged suddenlly to him.

Die Stadtrände Bezirke wie Hacking (und andere) sind zum Holzhandeldorfe verwandelt. Hacking is transformed into a small area which handles the harvested wood from the forests surrounding the city.


To feel myself drawn into Amöne´s world, and then asking, beckonging: What IS she just exactly.


Wilder than her sister, took paths which led to bad ends, but always seemed to recover from them, even flourish from the bruising that the rotten choices had brought upon her. Thus she rises far above ..... and wins the affections of Otto.

Both of the sisters were taught to play on a half broken Ottavino, one hewn from the seasoned wood inside the clock tower, and Amöne used this little shape of an instrument, with its sour notes and clickity clackity keys on the higher registers - to play out her heart to him. The music had decided long ago, when Albine was asked to improvise one evening. Hourds of übermödische hinterländere waited in the windoweaves, stuffed like Treibgut into Otto´s overly heated Leopoldstadt flat until they were balanced on the windowsills and about to fall out into the night. The music came forth from Albine, but her fingers pushed out the melodies as if reciting text from a book everyone knew. Phrases leap out, and were complex and beautiful, but well worn and not her own. Her black hair fell partially down on the keys made of bone and boxwood; one of her notes played upon her hair. The audience applauded weakly, politley, and Otto came and lifted her from the little Spinette,two hands pushed under her armpits, as as lifting a child, and kissed her ear. then Amöne sat down at the Ottavino: silence in the rooms. It smelled of wine and roses, glasses shone under the chandeliers, all eyes on the scruffy shape sitting before the keyboard, dissproving of her worn dress, and long black tresses tangled within her vest. And that ridiculoous English cap! But when she began tto play every heart oozed from its ribcage and slid down into the lower, unknown areas near the stomach, where one feelss shaken after nearly dying, or being in love, or hearing such wonderful things. Amöne teased and snatched beautiful melodies, thrashed them, here violent, and there tender and merciful as if stroking the head of a puppet. One could not follow the logical thread of the improvisations - it was moreso a muscial Puppenschauspiel with a beautiful but unseeable end. Amöne was the master of the little dolls which crept into the ears of the stupid, endlessly vapid audience. the little Bauerntöchter has them completely under her control, mesmerized as within a dreamy cocoon. The music stopped finally after a descending flourish from the high clicking keys down to the low, groaningly ungestimmte notes, and the applause was suddenly deafening. Some were near to tears, and saw Amöne turn round on the little round stool to face them through a moist vision; her black unkempt hair flowed down to her waist, a statue made from pale marble but with color in its cheeks. She heard nothing on this night, only saw Otto moving towards her, visibly shaken and stirred with emotion as he bent down to plant a wet kiss on her mouuth, bringing up his long coat at the same time to shield this kiss from view. For these few seconds, inside his coat, she belonged suddenlly to him.