Therefore, I thought that telling you of my situation would be a clear enough indication that I am totally unavailable and that any affair between you and I would not work. But, I guess I wasn't clear enough or that somehow I gave you the wrong idea...and for that I apologize also. I never ever wanted to 'play' with you..neither when we were together nor now. And, i can't help but feel guilty that you have had a hard time on my behalf.

But, as I said, I am in love with someone. That is it for me. This is the relationship that I was ready for, and somehow looking for - already when you and I met. With us, it was a case of inappropriate timing, i think. I was just coming out of a bad relationship. You were not yet over your last one. And, there was some kind of barrier between us for whatever reason. I think you are really very great and I was extremely attracted to you. We did have a very nice connection. And, the truth is, we could probably have it again. But, as it goes, things have moved in a different direction. I hope you can respect that.

Latest post alive

This next and last chapter of 2008 is ending soon. The Italian come back was altogether fine. I ll go back with the memory of the faces of my cousins´ children, two books by Magris and three by Braudel, some more kilos that I gained eating in here and a wonderful sense of belonging to there and not to here anymore.
Venice is (not) sinking is the title of a magazine; printed here from time to time it tries to hide the actual development of this (my) amazing and damned and doomed city.

Music wise it is a kind of boring period, not really keeping up with new releases. Ill do it in the next days.

Diana Krall - Love Songs
Kyuss - Welcome to Sky Valley
Feist - The Reminder
Feist - Let it Die
The Whitest Boy Alive - Dreams

Peace(in the Gaza strip and in Africa, first of all and to the whole of you too).

Uno ci crede anche che il tempo cura, cuce, cicatrizza e disinfetta e per la maggior parte delle giornate e dei mesi é vero...
Poi peró ci sono cose di cui non son capace, e quelle ed io cosí sono e cosí rimarranno...per quanto? Me lo sono chiesto cosí spesso che se lo faccio ancora mi sale il vomito...

sunday night in san sebastiano

I listen to Blonde on Blonde so that I may avoid to feel melancholic...

No Berlin before new year...a half emptied Venice for 5 more days instead...old friends, awesome food and a sense of growing laziness...

I have the feeling that something big will happen to me in this next 2009...

I am so relieved that this 2008 came to an end and that I am still on track...

I am not sure I will be surfing so much in the next days, so I wish all of you a pleasant end and a wonderful beginning...

Exit Interviews a sum-up

Et voilá

P J Harvey

Tired

"Boredom is the cause of everything"

Discussing does not equal behaving like parrots

Venice around 13.00 CET

I guess the thing is that my body understood the year was coming to the end and just gave up...
I am so exhausted and feel dizziness in my head since days...I called it fever but it is actually not...I would have liked to enjoy these last few days in Berlin since i am off from work(s) and studying until next year, but if I feel like the last 2 days, I guess I ll just sleep the whole day through...
Friends came over for the week-end and it has been fun: we did so much altogether...it is so easy to do stuff in this city, somehow...

Is there anybody who wants to come to the movies with me tomorrow night?

I am so tired, almost burnt out, and I guess that on top of that I am going to be sick before tonight...
I fly to Venice on the 24th...a year long away from Italy, a lot...

Take care you all.

EU2009

Fast dran

"If you have a Submariner Watch with you, the world will belong to you!"

...new frontiers of the spamming...my work addresse is oberated by shit, but some mails have so funny phrases on the "Subject" line...this one from this morning is awesome...when I read I was like:: "What?".

P.S. Submariner Watch is probably a registered trade mark, I apologize with the enterprise for the misuse: it won´t happen anymore.

The oldest and the youngsters

Three days of good purposes and 349 days of silence, a year.

More about Dostoevskij, less about Socialist planning

2 + 2 = 5

Pitseleh

I'll tell you why I don't want to know where you are
I got a joke I've been dying to tell you
The silent kid is looking down the barrel
To make the noise that I kept so quiet
I kept it from you, pitseleh

I'm not what's missing from your life now
I could never be the puzzle pieces
They say that god makes problems just to see what you can stand
Before you do as the devil pleases
And give up the thing you love

But no one deserves it

The first time I saw you, I knew it would never last
I'm not half what I wish I was
I'm so angry, I don't think it'll ever pass
And I was bad news for you, just because
I never meant to hurt you

Terms of the upcoming Czech Presidency of the EU

For those who are interested

It is not so easy to keep yourself updated with music when (1) your apple is so full that there is no place left for any extra torrent file, (2) you earn less money i.e. cannot buy so much new stuff...

So a small section of this blog, without title and completely personal, used to host a almost weekly top five of albums I had checked; now it turns into a songwise thing:
I guess the price goes to "Murder by Mistletoe" by The Felice Brothers this week...I almost cried on my wayback home on wednesday afternoon with this song, but I am very empfindlich lately...
Last week has been my "Misery is a Butterfly" week. The song "Melody" had the power to hypnotize me over and over again...
The week before that was all about this song by E.Smith and Pete Krebs: an astonishing concentrate of sadness...the way Marco likes it, you know.
Before that I guess it had been again about my personal Jesus, E. Smith, with his Demo of "Twilight"...
I had my quarter of an hour of E.Smith at the restaurant thursday and yesterday too (maybe even longer)...with the first try one girl actually started to weep a bit...too bad..but no way I am going to play Kaiser Chiefs because of that...

I thank people who post stuff or show in some other ways interest for this small blog.
Even if I am kind of skeptical of those who believe they can talk about everything because they know, I. Kant having been the very last and only one who truly could do it, I thank the anonymous about the Zizek contribution. I am listening to it.
I kindly recommend everybody to give a try to the chain of interviews George William Bush will have in the next weeks: he actually already started...you know, just for a record nowadays of what he would be able to say in 5 years.

What happens in Italy is so out of touch of any "rather functioning than not" system that I do not bother you any longer...The German Press is pretty good and objective in analyzing the Boot-country: if you know German you should read some analysis and then boycott the country (some other solutions?) and go for holiday somewhere... but I guess Croatia is not heaven as we would love to think.

I quit one job...you know in times of financial crisis I thought it was time to find myself some other form of occupation...it is going to be fine, isn`t it?

Blog readers and music makers

MilkBoy UnLabel

Tief verknalt zu sein in der Zeiten des blöden Chatten

I wonder what she does during her busy days...and I have no ideas...sometimes I wonder whether she listens to the music I recently gave her...sometimes I try to believe that she thinks about me at least a tenth of the time I do it...sometimes I just hope she is not too tired, sometimes that she is so tired and fed up that she might come back to me...then there are those few seconds when she logs in, and for those few minutes I know what she does...and I feel good and at the same time an idiot to think that this small information means anything...

Misery is a Butterfly - Blonde Redhead

I walked back from work in the cold..this album describes almost perfectly the feelings I had...such an amazing collection of songs!

I am doing very fine lately, I miss a bit the funny side of life though...

I went to the TVOTR´s gig yesterday: they are definitely the most interesting band I have seen lately...really really cool...I guess I just found the vocals kind of worse than expected...

The day before yesterday I saw Fleet Foxes...well, nice but probably a bit overrated by myself in the first place...maybe we have to wait until the next album...

I am in love with a band called Grizzly Bear. The LPs cost already so much, damned...

I am waiting for a reply from a mail I sent Sunday...

I wish you a good week

Der Goldene Hahn

There are always those who like it a lot and those who don´t...

As if I only played T. Waits, all the time...

Perché in Italia non ne parla piú nessuno, per dio?!

Anthony

I need another place.
Will there be peace?
I need another world.
This one’s nearly gone.
Still have too many dreams.
Never seen the light.
I need another world.
A place where I can go.

I’m gonna miss the sea. I’m gonna miss the snow. I’m gonna miss the bees. I’m gonna miss the trees. I’m gonna miss the sound. I’ll miss the animals. I’m gonna miss you all.

I need another place.
Will there be peace?
I need another world.
This one’s nearly gone.
I’m gonna miss the birds.
Singing all these songs.
Been kissing this so long.

Another world. Another world. Another world. Another world…

Another small big scandal

Roberto Saviano was supposed to participate yesterday or the day before to an event in Berlin...exactly as last year happened - I found out by myself today too - he could not come and assist to the premiere of a theater piece on Naples auf Sicherheitsgründe...that means because of security problems...
I hope that next time (1) the German police either motu proprio or because of an intervention of the Italian Embassy/Institut of Italian Culture (what does the Italian governemnt say?) will provide enough security to a man, as old as me, who just thought he had to describe a world of injustice and ignorance, violence and enormous amount of daily symbolic and actual shit...(2) I also hope that Mr. Saviano will tell us soon which kind of security problems he has in Berlin.
To him all my esteem, and wishes to succeed in remaining a normal 28 years old interesting and interested Italian guy...once more.

News from Czech...

Colourful, well I can say it is sometimes...but playful as well...hm...
Czech Logo

With the same sounds of feathers falling on mattresses, my thoughts slowly turn in circles..."Der Weltpresident" (so much bullshit on the German media auf einmal), Tolstoy and his anarchist tendencies, Ammaniti and his funny and weird first book, a story of cheating that never ends, the warmest Berliner November days of history...I sleep randomly, I wake up often and at the strangest times ever...I am busy in my mind and empty of small things in my soul...I think "do it yourself, share with others" is an awesome and right starting point...where are you though?

I am not sure Christmas is further enough to accomplish all the things I have to.
But I stay positive, like that old odd Streets´song

Travis - Ode to J. Smith (hmmm)
Anthony and The Johnsons - EP (Amazing)
The Felice Brothers - Ibid.
The Faint - EP (Oh My God 1.1)
Jack White and Alicia Keys - The Single (Oh My god 1.2)

Listening to italian radio ( not an indie one but anyway ) in the morning, while drinking the first coffee is such a nice moment of the day...even better if i could share it while somebody...
A good day to everybody...

A video

It is a bit pretentious to talk all the time about the politics of a country I never visited...but I think it is also the right of informed people (or at least for those who want to be informed more than the average Idontgiveasheet citizen) to evaluate and express their opinion about political events in foreign countries...even more when decisions taken there, change in many ways the quality of everybody's life...

These last 8 years of American Federal Government seemed to have had elected the most provincial people to the most powerful posts, for the worse...as opposite to that, this last never-ending primaries and main elections, which lasted too long anyway, awoke my interests, encreased my knowledge of American social cleavages, issues, news report and geography as well...I am so relieved and truly happy to have B.Obama as President of the country that attracts me since ages but I never saw so far.

I am in Barcelona, listen to C. Evora and imagine that even if the roofs of Raval look exactly the same as yesterday, a small big day is taking place...
I will enjoy my coffee a bit more anytime soon then!

Kensington Blues & Co.

There is not a lot to say, that is probably why I listen to jack Rose and find it very beautiful.
I have been working too much, probably...
I ll be in Barcelona on monday morning for a couple of days...
I do not need vacation, actually, I need some tenderness and a bit of intimacy...

A nice week-end to the whole of you.

Wassuuuup

friday night on a sleeve...

I am 28 years old and am just the why I am...

I escape hypocrisy and pop culture, I love LPs and indie radio stations, real Merlot and contemporary British writers...

Aufgabe: finden was dran nicht passt

Ein Bild

We know that it cannot keep him safe, but at least these few bites will hopefully have some effects on rotting Italy...

Roberto Saviano is under death threats for denouncing the criminal deeds of the Camorra in his book Gomorra, translated and read all over the world. His freedom is under threat as well as his autonomy as a writer, his chances to meet his family, to enjoy a social life, to take part in public life, to travel in his own country.

A young writer, guilty of having investigated organized crime, revealing its methods and its structure, is forced to live a hidden, underground life, while the Camorra bosses send him death threats from prison ordering him to stop writing for his newspaper, La Repubblica, and to keep silent.

The State must make every effort to protect Saviano and to defeat the Camorra. But this is not a mere police case. It's a problem of democracy. Saviano's freedom and safety concerns everyone of us as citizens.

Signing this appeal we intend to take charge of it, as a personal commitment, urging the State at the same time to assume its responsibilities because it's intolerable that something like this can happen in Europe in 2008.

DARIO FO
MIKHAIL GORBACIOV
GUNTHER GRASS
RITA LEVI MONTALCINI
ORHAN PAMUK
DESMOND TUTU

Sign here

Endorsement number 2.345.987, probably...

Neva Dinova - You May Already Be Dreaming
Josephine Foster - Hazel Eyes, I Will Lead You
The Dodos - Visiter
Mogwai - (EP whose name I do not know)
CSS - CSS

Probably talking shit on politics and driving a car too fast are two events not interrelated at all...anywho and anyhow...

Menthally embalanced

Small accomplishments and never ending everyday life loops...

I listen to "The Gun Club" but I am not sure I shall do it again any soon...
I learnt how to switch on the dinamo on my bike with a foot, while I cycle not handling the bar...uh?...take that...!
I stopped smoking four weeks ago....baaaam!
I work at the restaurant: so boring....
I work in an office, where I fill Excel files in and write mails.....boring...
My holydays are not paid, my bed is double and I always sleep alone, my guitar does not weep at all, my back hurts, my neighbours are badly sick ...
...but I keep on listening music...

TV On The Radio - Dear Science (Amazingly modern)
Lambchop - Oh
Blonde Redhead - 23 (Again, mostly because of the song "SW")
Calexico - Carried to Dust
Bob Dylan - Tell Tale Signs (Bootleg n.8)
Kings of Leon - Only By The Night

I cannot get rid of the wonder when I think she has been directly voted in Alaska...

Ms Bromberg and nightlife in Kreuzberg on wednesday

Tonight I wanted really badly and managed to meet the only girl who drove me really crazy for a while this last year...I wanted to meet her mostly because I thought it would have been better to talk to her first and not to meet her by chance...but I also wanted to see her, just that...in the end I had a lot of red wine, no food, went to a birthday party and realized it is so much about timing, my dears...and I am not talking about mortgage or the financial investments...timing with biological needs, life achievements, drinking levels, acquaintance with compromise and need of company...

I am lonely, I live with Marthe, I wake up when I have to work...and I love to buy presents for people I love...

I am so lonely somehow...in a irreparable way....

September came to an end...

I realized that I started to forget faces, names and the way people smile...I listen to "Blonde on Blonde" and once more I realize that some music albums are just perfect...this one is one of those...every track is special and unforgettable, every time for some different reason...1966...ages ago...

I go to Czech Republic for the second time this year...once more as a tourist...once more with a feeling of unaccomplished life behind and toward...university is not going the way I would like to see myself in...

It has been raining the whole day and all I managed is having helped a friend with some burocratic stuff...

I am not lazy, I think I am just unfit to keep on doing what I am now...

Because sometimes we are not just football and pizza...

Berlin beim Untergang

I have been working almost 12 hours but nevertheless I did not "produce" anything special today...the nice thing is that I spent the dinner with some students from Eastern Europe, that is something I always like so much...


Around 7.40 p.m. I was on top of the Reichstag ...the view is amazing, the city I live in is very charming by night...and I felt so lonely somehow...the students I was bringing around were taking pictures, having fun and were so excited to be there...I was so moved by the atmosphere over there...on top of the dom...and I realized how lonely you can feel even if beauty surrounds you all over the place, sometimes even more becuase of that...should I have called somebody? I did not find anybody I really felt like sharing this feeling with...maybe because of the feeling, maybe because of my adress book...

I am finally home, I needed a drink so badly and I am having it listening some old stuff by Micah P. Hinson...tomorrow is going to be the same as today...but at least I am not going on top of the Reichstag by doom...

Cheers

Bier und Deutschland

Koeln und die dümmste Menschen Europas

So traurig

From September the fourth

Damien Hirst and the oddness of modern art

From a very famous, rich and over evaluated artist to some unknown overenriched business man...because culture has no price, uh?

""I think the market is bigger than anyone knows," ... "I love art and this proves I'm not alone and the future looks great for everyone" D.H.

nice 1.0

je voudrais ecrir beaucoup but this fucking french keyboard got on my nerves...even onthat they do feel the urge to be different!

Have a look

There you go

Turkey 1.0

I write from my huge apartment in Neukölln, Berlin, Europe and wear a jacket because though sunny, it is already fall, no matter how you put it...

On the 6th I left Greece and went to Turkey, where I spent three amazing days...went to Efes, at the archeological sites...since I know this girl who works there, we could be there already at seven in the morning, we had breakfast there and enjoyed the rising up warm turkish sun...amazing!
I talked with this super cool turk who works with restoration since decades...so interesting...I saw once fresco in a cave, which is probably the first paint of Saint Paul in Christian history...WHat I did not know is that all that we see in Efes nowadays comes form the third century AD, means full on Roman times! Did not know at all....always thought it was a greek archeological site...

That part of Turkey has been an astonishing discovery and the people I met where so nice and friendly...after all those days of loneliness in Greece it is been a perfect comeback to normal life...

Kusadasi and all these super touristic places are so hugly...like a millions of places alike...closed up in a resort, drinking beer from your country and eating fried chips and ketchup...while some cheap dance music plays...I am shivering...

Food, light, colors, sounds (it was Ramadan time), faces and cats ( oh my god the cats, the 5 or 6 that jumped on my legs spontaneously and all the rest....)of this small Selcuk and neighbourhood (all that I managed to see in two days) have been a gift. Amazing.

I have told only to one person that I am back since yesterday...but I guess today Ill have a walk and enjoy company of this beautiful though crazy city...

Greece 4.1

I sleep more and more...Greece makes you lazy in a gentle way...the same way it makes your skin brown and your mood relaxed...

Did not go to the club, if there was any doubt...mt narcisism is apparently not as strong as I think...

I went to the same beach today too...swam and read like everyday...the bar at the beach is so full of this lazyness that I see a whole bunch of young people doing literally nothing for hours, everyday...all I do is reading and seldom try to talk with them...
But today something funny happened: you have to know that as guest of this bar there is Costa: late 30 probably, big and fat, hairy like few men I have seen are...with real titties falling over his tummy like a couple of rotten pears...well today the sexy Costa, who tries to be the dj of the bar, playing his collection of hits from the 70s and 80s in form of burnt cds (you, like R. Williams, uh? He asked me last week and became upset by my unenthusiastic answer) was either so bored or so excited ( he was talking with a female tourist on the beach for twenty minutes...well...he and his breast) to decide to let his back be shaved by the ultra bored girl working at the bar...but not totally, rather - the funny Costa thought - partially in order to have a heart-shaped hole in the black forest of his back, with a "I." on its left and a "Y." on its right...you know...I love you....
It has been so funny: the seriousness of his face, the half amused half disgusted face of the temporary back-hair dresseuse, the silent presence of the other people (who finally had found something the day would have been remembered for), the disgusting mass of sweaty-Costas hair on the floor...

But if you think that our hero was satisfied, well you are wrong and I was too...
After one hour, when the girl - probably not believing in such a positive attitude of Costa and his breast - asked him to write something in the heart-shaped skin: Costa accepted, no doubt about it!...they wrote "Power Lower"...now that I tell you the whole story I cannot believe it has been true...oh man, Costa with his pears on one side and hairless heart on the other, went back home at some point this afternoon like the one and only power-lower of Greece...amazing!

Apart from that no big news...I am leaving to Kudakasi, Turkey via Samos on friday...will visit Nadine, a friend who works at the archeological site in Efes...
I´ll tell her the story of Costa and let´s see how she reacts...kalispera...

Greece 4.0

From Yesterday:

I managed to lose a lot of stuff in these first ten days. Fortunately I also managed to get most of the things back.
Lost and (re)found: phone, sunglasses, hat, a book.
Lost: hat, ten euros, a towel, a pencil (my favourite one, damned!).

Those losses happened mostly in the first days...not used to be a traveller on the road anymore, apparently...
I left the phone at a public telephone in Samos for thirty minutes...the woman working in the car-renting agency in front of it saw that at once...it took much longer than her (half an hour?) to realize I had lost a brand new and expensive finnish phone...
Hats are not for me, that is the only clear message I got from all this losing and finding thing...

I dream of her three times a week since I am here...or at least I remember three times a week that I do....sleeping longer and deeper has also this unpleasant though unavoidable side effect...
...hugging me in Venice in my room because she wants to wake me up, driving her own green car and discussing with me, walking with me and her new young, dumb and stinky (seldom I also perceive smells in my dreams...) boyfriend while a complicated and irrational dreamy spy story takes place...plus some other situations...
Last night I woke up at five in such a bad mood because of this last dream (the spy story one) and I wondered once more what the hell is wrong with me...I think I try my best not to think about it...no way...
The dream thing has the power to make my mood so bad for half a day at least...damned how would I have broken a couple of chairs this morning!

Now that I read till the end "Mother Night" by K. Vonnegut, read about anti-Semitism in Tsarist and Soviet Russia, drank coffees and laid in the sun, swam like a crazy guy for twenty minutes and had a normal chat with another Janni, I feel ok...
I think I am going to the only club of the island tonight...I guess for two main reason:
1. need to be looked at by women because my narcisism misses the eye-flirt thing a bit after all these days by myself;
2. curiosity to see how tacky a club in an island with 800 inhabitants can be.

Greece 3.0

I did not discover who is the "owner" of the wireless connection that i found in the main street of the tiny village of Fourni...I asked a lot of people...I did not find a single person who actually understood what the hell I was talking about...even my pretty good Italian gesturing art did not manage to let the concept of a uncabled internet connection to be cleared up...so I sit in my room now, write on my MacBook and go soon to the only (and very expensive) internet café of the tiny village of Fourni...

Sunday in the tiny village of Fourni: the mess of 8.00 just ended, old people and wooden sticks floating out of the church, at the speed of lazy cockroaches, in couples, alone, as the accomplishment of their only duty of the day...I sit in the coffee place in front of the church, my favourite one so far, reading a book and stare at them, wondering how can old people from a tiny village be so different in the way they look: an old woman with her stick, small as a sitting chair, as a luggage, bending her left , opposite to the stick, to an old man who is twice as tall as her...they walk away, I read the book till the end...have another shaked coffee...two euros of ice water sugar and a bit of coffee, a sort of officially acknowledged theft, in terms of money...but I found out it is not tourists´ fares...it is just an over priced tasty pleasure...

Bikes (motor-) start to couple the sound of the few bees and mosquitos that run the air, afoolish... I think that sometimes exageration turns reality into a very funny human-stage, ours...nobody drives his bike with helmet: neither adults, nor babies...neither when they are four (F O U R) on, the whole family driving helmetlessly, slowly though, through the tiny village of F O U Rni...nor when they are running through the steep and dusty roads that head up north...but then, ladies and gentlemen, on cigarettes´ boxes you read the very essence of EU´s taking care of us all: smoking kills, destroys lungs, testicules, the lungs of people around you (what about their testicules?), affects skin, makes you dummer, fatter and heart-attacks prone...all true but I wonder, sitting on the marble bench of my favourite coffee place in the heart of the tiny village of FOURni, how many die of car accidents, actively of passively, yearly or mothly; I also ask myself how a person can take one advice seriously when the whole thing does not look very consequent.
I get another sip of my medium sweet, over priced coffee shake and think it is odd enough to be reasoned upon...

The only persons I had a conversation with are the following:

1. a woman, early thirties, from Athens, who was sitting in a restaurant in Menoi Beach, Patmos for a couple of hour as I did, having a solitary woman vacation in Aegean Islands...told me a lot of stories, about Greece and about its islands, about the women in FOURni, who apparently should have a particular attractions for men in a uniform, showed me videos taken with her brand new phone and complained a bit about size, national composition (bulgarian and romanian, macedonian!) and loudness of Athens before leaving with a couple of tips about here and about other islands I should visit, and I will never do...her name? She said it...too difficult to remember anyway...sorry but who cares?

2. A man, Janni (my age? A bit older?), native from FOURni, I´d say 80 percent gay, I´d say 70 percent hitting on me in a havetolooklikeagreekMANway...works on the cruises, as waiter, knows a better-than-the-FOURnian-average english...nice guy, the only one who talked to me...thanks to him or because of him I played with my Ipod at this bar on the beach for half an hour..."The kills" being the only band awakening some sort of interest in the locals ( you know the bum bum bum beat kind of creeping into the song)...we talked about stuff, after during and before my short dj appearance...he likes Holland, has friends there...likes Belgium too, will go to both countries next December for Xmas...does not know that a city called Berlin exists (literally)...does not know what the word university means, I hope only in english ( have to find out, along the greek car-accidents yearly mortality rate, the word for uni in greek)...just to tell how complicated a conversation can be...he "bumped" me the same day of the my dj thing though (realized I am not gay at all?)...a guy is getting married in these days and on that evening a party for him should have taken place, at the same bar at the beach...well the janni guy told me he would have brought me there...supposed to show up at 12.30, never came and did not say why the next day...
Funny people...

Generations´ change is slower here, the difference between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters seems somehow samller in here than in someother countries...there is anyway a lot of sexual issues here under the surface...men being driving all the time, women lagging often a step behind them, boys with scooter, girls without...men handling money, women cleaning and taking care of babies...a bit too much old fashioned for me...but so relaxing and sunny and easy and simple and clear.
The only thing I wanted to take seriously here was myself...I sleep so much and drink almost nothing...swim a lot and smoke less...rehab.
Take care you all and have a nice beginning of September.

Greece 2.1

Observed from a local point of view, the life style I have had since I came to this island yesterday probably looks kind of weird...or extremely boring...
All I do is going for a swim from the beaches close to the village, read in a café or in the beautiful plateia there is in the heart of the Fourni and sleep endlessly. Today I just swam tweice and slept most of the day...I guess I did not feel tired in the first days because of the aufregung of having come to Greece...since yesterday night I probably slept 13 hours in three different shots...unbelievable...but the being tired came out and I am delighted it finally did...this is what I neede to get rid of...

I am sitting on a bench at the sea side and look at the end of this beautiful sunset...there is already nobody in here...it is so quiet and I feel tired anyway, even if I did nothing...this next decision of coming here did not emprove my level of "normality" from the point of view of the local community I guess...

I probably said ten words in the whole day (a coffee, please, a coke, please thank you twice and formal hi in greek a couple of times)...I do not find it strange, I have to say...
Locals are not welcoming lonely planet tourists, I guess...at least if it is just one person...kind of stupid of them but I expected that...

All the colours from blue to blue are into this stripe of light I see in between sea and sky, I guess a star is coming out soon...Greece here is easy, does not ask you to be anything special...erases a lot of the features you bring along with yourelf fom your place...there is no big expectations about the way you look, the swimsuit you have or the shoes you dress....there is not even a club to go to, zum Glueck!

The most obvious thing people tell you when you explain you go for vacation by yourself is that you actually will not be able to share with somebody the amazing moments there will be...but so far I do not consider it a problem...I am definitely a solitary man, this vacation so far shows it is not so bad...anyway I just took a picture of this harbour and I think I am going to post it along this text in the blog...
The funniest thing that happened so far is that on the boat to here, sitting three seats on my left, there were two Stammgäste of the Goldener Hahn...we do not need even two grades of separation in Greece!

The Felice Brothers had released a first album that was just fine...now with the second (but I read that it should be the first American release...did not get it) they are turning into a really cool band: a couple of tracks I listened to today have a super cool groovy beat and smart guitars, and his voice is remarkable...textwise I cannot say...I think they talk about women all the time..not such big news...

This Fleet Foxes band has released a very interesting album, which, as you should know if you read this blog, is named after the band, but there is one single, not in the album (on the torrent it is actually named "Mikonos") that is pure poetry...when I went to Mitte with the bike on monday night, I listened to it over and over again, way and bak non stop, until you get the feeling that the next song of the tracklist should be the song itself!...the first two minutes of this track are so beautiful...

Comparing this vacation with a vacation to New York makes no sense...that is the reason why I should stop making comparison in the first place...easier to say than to do, since I think about what time should be there now every couple of hour...how long is it going to last this not being able to state once for all: "Whatever!"?
We are on the edge of the 10 months...I do care about time when it does not give you the feeling to work on the right memories in a proper way...it has been too much time, damned...way too much...

The sunlight is totally gone and it is too difficult to type properly...enough for today then...

Greece 2.0

23rd August Samos
23.20 p.m.

I am in Samos but since this is both the name of the whole island and the name of one of ist villages, I have no idea how to locate myself...and it is really so...
I actually have a map of the harbour where i am staying, I know how to reach the place where I found a room and by the way I am writing this post from there...but since the names are all written in this alphabet I am not really familiar with yet, I have to take a bus tomorrow from here to get to the next harbour where the boat to Fourni is leaving from..

The voice of a child and of her grandfather are the only sounds in the air since I started writing...children voices...even when it is greek, it is so amazing and bringing me somewhere else...I am sitting on the balcony of my small apartment, the sea is probably 50 meters away with ist rocky beach and salty water...the child is talking with her grandpa...I even exchanged a greeting in greek with him when they arrived home 20 minutes ago...her voice has been the most wonderful thing that happened to me today, August the 23th of this fucking 2008...and she still talks and I thank myself to have brought me here....
I love kids´ voices in all the languages, both those that I know and those that I do not...so far but probably forever...I thought I could start having some of these cute smart animals soon...

I am leaving tomorrow, finally heading to the island I consider my personal krankenhaus...it is dangerous since I have never been there...but I did not find any better solution, after having been messing around with a dozen of girls and having been making new plans since december...

This language I do not understand sounds a relief when spoken by this small girl...

greece 1.0

...it is really true then that I do not fear the sunset...for I am in Patmos and right now "ist Untergang"...I have been cycling 15 kms, swam three times in a day and read just a bit...I went by swim to a rocky beach where I was the only one, as I wanted as I was longing for...I also had an amazing lunch at four in the afternoon in the middle of the island, where I was asked by the owner of the restaurant to come into his kitchen and check what they had...I went for some fried sardines and a greek salad...the best food I can remember since ages...Greece is easy...it is wonderful...you just have to get rid of this lame mass of dudes and girls with scooters and it turns into the best holyday place if you need to get yourself back together again...it is just a bit expensive...

I am drinking a ouzo at the port, I am not skin burnt yet...heading to Samos tomorrow...I still think about her every 5 minutes, as in the last two years, and I wonder what the hell is wrong with me...aber ich bin wirklich nicht in der Lage, noch weiter zu meckern...

not the sunset nor the rain....

...
I am not afraid of the suffering or the pain
I am just afraid that I haven´t been finding you
...

The most beautiful song I have heard this month, at least...

DM´sB

Sad loss

2 days to go

Iron & Wine - The Shepard´s Dog (again after a while)
Micah P. Hinson and the Red Empire Orchestra
Port O´Brien - All we could do was sing
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
Wayne Shorter - Night Dreamer
The Felice Brothers - The Felice Brothers


Apparently I found somebody to fly to France with...I have such a bad pain in the breast since early this morning...I think about Australia and about all the screaming parrots, the funny animals, the gigantic egg breakfast portions, white cars and trucks that I have seen there...

If I could stop dreaming of her while I sleep next to somebody else...
If I could not think about the dreams for the whole next day...

On the same day, from the same airport, apparently at the same time...but not flying in the same place...

Are you sure that this guy should be our foreign minister?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGYJHCt5yBQ

not sleeping, not studying, writing or doing sports...
But at least I have some visitors...

What is wrong with this summer?

Still on the room renting thing....

Share also this one...

To be forwarded to those interested

Even if I do not have a lot of money saved so far, I planned a 4 weeks long vacation period that should bring me to Greece and France for sure, and maybe to Turkey in between.

By the way, I am seriously (and it is really meant for what is written) looking for a girl who wants to join an handsome, silent and polite Italian guy for a 3 and a half days trip to Nizza: 12-15 September.

The only things I consider kind of important are:
- not an orthodox of any genre;
- not a fan of soap operas;
- not a vegan, nor a berlusconi/gigi d´alessio/britney spears/metallica/max biaggi/coldplay/carla bruni/coehlo supporter or fan.
- she should be able to speak (at least) a bit of one of the following languages: Italian, German, English or French...you know, just for those few words that are necessary once in a while during a day.

Double Room, three stars, downtown.


If you know people who are coming to Berlin in the next weeks, well, please forward them these links. I would really appreciate it.

Craigslist Berlin
WG- gesucht
Studenten-WG

I. Calvino, Lezioni Americane (Rapiditá), pp. 59-60.

(...) Dall´antichitá si ritiene che il comportamento saturnino sia proprio degli artisti, dei poeti, dei cogitatori, e mi pare che questa caratterizzazione corrisponda al vero. Certo la letteratura non sarebbe mai esistita se una parte degli esseri umani non fosse stata incline a una forte introversione, a una scontentezza per il mondo com´é, a un dimenticarsi delle ore e dei giorni fissando lo sguardo sull´immobilitá delle parole mute. Certo il mio carattere corrisponde alle caratteristiche tradizionali della categoria a cui appartengo: sono sempre stato anch´io un saturnino, qualsiasi maschera diversa abbia cercato d´indossare. Il mio culto di Mercurio corrisponde forse solo a un´aspirazione, a un voler essere: sono un saturnino che sogna di essere mercuriale, e tutto ció che scrivo risente di queste due spinte.

I am so against everything that I cannot even stand the sober version of myself...but I am pretty good at working, at least when that means to be totally alone...

Tomorrow there will be a post on Calvino...

I am so sad and silent

Wedding invitation

one of the few girls, who drove me really crazy at some point of my life, is getting married soon...the first...not the last, I guess...

The Times are A-Changing...

The beauty and charm of italian women...is something you cannot get totally rid of...my love for jazz, W. Marsalis and its music from 20 years ago...the beauty of a sunrise in Berlin...the loneliness of a man still in love with his past...the long chain of sleepless late nights, and hangovering dayafters...

She was in my dreams yesterday...what is it going to happen in the next few hours?

My friend Hrovje is becoming famous...

Video

I love her

Barack bei der Siegessäule

I think it is the first time after a long time taht I am really sorry I will not be able to be present at somebody´s speech...
NYT on Obama in Berlin.

Of women and of the sources of perpetual misunderstanding

Initial remark: A post that is accurately generalising and provocative

They need to know the end of anything so badly; they pretend after a while to know it anyway...they are full of ex-post explanations and a priori thoughts that you will never be able to assume...
They want both to tell you the end of a story - movie or book, personal or general - and to show you they were right...
They need to be sure they know what is going on...
They guess they are sure they know what you think...in the worst cases even why you think so...
They think that a choice is not a risk, rather a solution...
They think they do act strategically, while they mostly believe you are maybe able to be tactical, in the best case scenario...
They think surprise belongs to the basket of things they have already thought could happen...
They believe feelings are a confirmation of reality...
They (worst of all) need to explain and not to understand...

It is much more likely that I find myself lagging behind some sort of unescapable right/wrong discussion than a true/false one...

dienstag der 22.

When you think you need to smoke, but you actually just have not eaten for ages...
When you think you are just in a bad mood, but you have been drinking too much, too often...
When you think your day is too long...
When you do not do anything for hours...
When you look for some plans, and you find yourself in the laziest mood ever...
When you realize you have good friends, but it is not enough...
When you think you can spend time by yourself, and yourself does not agree...
When sex is just the fullfilment of a biological need...
When there is no beauty all around...
When you hope music is the answer, or at least the company...
When you are not able to go into a shop by yourself...
When you escape company, because you know you would actually need it...

When you realize that it could be worse, of course, but really much worse...?

The newest Restaurant in Barcelona

Enzo and Rachel´s new challenge: there you go!

7...14...21...28...

More news from nowhere

That is all I managed to read lately....two amazing books, anyway...

Milan Kundera: Kniha smíchu a zapomnění
Italo Calvino: le lezioni americane

....

This feeling of litost surrounds me anyway
....

Silver Jews - "Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea"
Rufus Wainwright - "Rufus Wainwright"
Califone - "Roots and Crowns"
Low - "Trust"
Jack Rose - "Jack Rose"
Califone - "Quicksand/cradlesnakes"
Antony and the Johnsons - "Antony and the Johnsons"
Edith Piaf - "The very Best of Edith Piaf"
Gordon Lightfoot - "Gordon Lightfoot: Complete Greatest Hits"

Why am I so blind / with my eyes wide open...

Answers...?

What did i share with her? Why am I so unable, uncapable to understand people for what they are? What am I for a person, then, that is the next question...
There is no solution...My mind has been running in circles since November...I have no energy left for that...there is no solution anyway...just the defeat.

I bought a cheap turntable and two boxes...I can finally say I have a stereo home...first time in my life, that is kind of awkward of me, since I am such a music junkie...anyway I started to collect Lps and singles and it is so much fun.

I am going to Prague on friday, so this year as well I manage to go once more back to the beloved -complicatedly beloved- Czech Republic...I read today that the thing C.Republic and Italy share the most lately, is their fear for Roma people...it is unbelievable to realize that...there are probably twice as much American people in C. Republic as Roma; while in Italy, well Italy, should we even try to find an explanation?

Antony and the Johnsons - I am a Bird Now
Joan as a Police Woman - To Survive
Bonnie P. Billy - Lie Down in the Light
Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell - Sunday at Devil Dirt
Portishead - III

Need of confirmation...

I am sure there is no better jazz Lp than "Ballads" by J. Coltrane Quartet;
I am sure she is the most beautiful woman I have ever met;
I am sure I will keep on asking myself why we are not meant to be together;
I am sure I will never be rich;
I am sure I do not believe in God;
I am sure I will never be a supporter of the German national team;


I wonder why I do need to make all these clear...

When it is not so obvious but you feel you chose the right spot for yourself.

P. Graham on cities and stimuli.

...even more than 5 Million Downloads in a day!

Get the New Firefox, I have it since they launched and I find it very smart...
Spread the fox...

The last covering Cash ever....

If you could read my mind love
What a tale my thoughts could tell
Just like an old time movie
bout a ghost from a wishin well
In a castle dark or a fortress strong
With chains upon my feet
You know that ghost is me
And I will never be set free
As long as Im a ghost that you cant see
If I could read your mind love
What a tale your thoughts could tell
Just like a paperback novel
The kind that drugstores sell
When you reach the part where the heartaches come
The hero would be me
But heroes often fail
And you wont read that book again
Because the endings just too hard to take

Id walk away like a movie star
Who gets burned in a three way script
Enter number two
A movie queen to play the scene
Of bringing all the good things out in me
But for now love, lets be real
* I never thought I could act this way *
And Ive got to say that I just dont get it
I dont know where we went wrong
But the feelins gone
And I just cant get it back

If you could read my mind love
What a tale my thoughts could tell
Just like an old time movie
bout a ghost from a wishin well
In a castle dark or a fortress strong
With chains upon my feet
But stories always end
And if you read between the lines
Youll know that Im just tryin to understand
The feelins that you lack
I never thought I could feel this way
And Ive got to say that I just to get it
I dont know where we went wrong
But the feelins gone
And I just cant get it back

Invincible

Listen, buy, enjoy.

I like this song so much, how, and it is just a blues...

Said the moon was ours, yeah
Said the moon was ours, the hell with the day
The sunlight is always gonna take love away
Brings up suspicions and alibies
But I can see blue, tear-blinded eyes
Lies, lies, lies, ohh lies

I got a stone where my heart should be
I got a stone where my heart should be
And nothing I do will make you love me
I'd leave this time, break all my ties
Be no more use for any disguise
Lies, lies, lies, ohh lies

I wanna die without pain
I wanna die, oh, without pain
All this deception I just can't maintain
The sun, moon, the stars in the sky
It'd hurt me too bad if you said goodbye
Lies, lies, lies, ohh lies

Vor 3 Jahre in Reichenberg

Encrypted post...

Listening to some piano sonatas by Rachmaninov...kind of cheesy, you could  say...it is relaxing and the opposite of what is going on in my highly-turkish.populated neighbourhood: fireworks, cars and flags all over the place...to je skoda, cesky republiku...
Reading the plans concerning the rebuild of Moscow in the 30s, what the fuck...I found myself in very funny and strange situations, and it is obviously not at all about what I have to read for class...I probably have a big role in being doing the wrong thing...
Even if I do not want to, I am actually counting the days...it should be soon, at the end of the month probably...
I feel home in the new apartment and it is a feeling I had not felt for more than 2 years...
How I miss you anyway...a cent for every time I forced myself not to think about it....

do you want to take this..............?

The coolest husband ever...P.H.

I want it loud

you are going to be mine....

blah blah

MGMT : Oracular Spectular
Grizzly Bear: Yellow House
Notwist: the Devil You and Me
Rino Gaetano: Aida ´93
Espers: II

Flying shoes

My parents are thinking about going to Prague for a week in July: I guess Ill join them for the week-end...
Ill also have to go to work to Nice in September, that is actually great news, after eight years having been away...Nice, j´arrive...

I also try to plan some vacations for the end of August, beginning of September (presuming that my bank account will soon return to be a 4 digits one): favourite spots, so far:

- Eastern Greece
- Western Turkey
- Canary Islands
- Southern France
- Southern Portugal
- Croatian Coast

As you can easily understand the necessary conditions are few : not too expensive, deep blue sea, good fish cuisine, sunny 95% of the time and in top of it with a depressing, trashy/non-existent night life scene.

If you knew anybody who has an empty room, a cage with toilet, a bush with roof or a broken cabriolet in any of these areas, please let me know...you would definitely emprove the rating of your karma/aura or your chances not to go to hell...I tell ya...

Bye bye Sydney

Adieu

Voyeurs?

I posted more stuff lately...unfortunately we are still by a quite mediocre 1 reaction every fifth post, on the average...not very interactive...apparently readers are more than those who post...that is nice to know...
I wonder whether I should change the "whole policy" of this blog and make it "spicier"...
Ill give this thought a try then, let us see what happens...
All I can say, in my first attempt to bring some fresh air into this, is that tonight I have a date...
It is the first time that it happens since October 2006...so I guess it is really big news...

I woke up at 5.15 a.m. this morning: I am not sure Ill be very brilliant tonight...whatever, the girl is really interesting.
A hug for the whole of you...

Because........

Why is J. Johnson so famous?
Why are Italian voters so damned stubborn?
Why does every sunday newspaper bullshit about food recipes?
Why are Germans so stiff?
Why will the Olympics take place in Beijing?
Why is London so expensive?
Why do Turkish men drive only BMW cars?
Why do Swiss people talk so funny any of the languages they are supposed to know?
Why is Venice so empty?
Why is San Francisco so far away?
Why does Haneke make another "Funny Games"?
Why doesn´t my flatmate like cats?
Why is Lausitzerstrasse always on the spot?

I talk to the wind

There is no reason in drinking so much...there is not even a need for it...it just happens...I am really proud of myself tonight because at half past 2 I took the way home...
The new album from Portishead does not belong to the present, not even to the future...such a huge disappointment...
I miss playing, laughing, being in vacation and she. Period.

Recent readings

Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five
Arendt - Eichmann in Jerusalem
McEwan - On Chesil Beach
McEwan - Enduring Love
Hobsbawm - On the Edge of the New Century

Posting and being posted...

"I think most people who maintain blogs are doing it for some of the same reasons I do: they like the idea that there’s a place where a record of their existence is kept — a house with an always-open door where people who are looking for you can check on you, compare notes with you and tell you what they think of you."
Have a look

Bemerkungen um ein langweiliges Leben

I smoked a cigarette this afternoon while working and met by chance an italian girl who is working in another Insitute, just in front of mine. She studied the same as I, in the same small and depressing city (Forlí) but started three years and a half ago. Well, you know what happened, she asked me if she could use the informal language with me (in German you can either use the second singular person - informal - or the third plural - formal...in italian is something similar)...
Do I look so old? Serious I do look for sure...that is more a feeling than a anything else...anyway it has been really surprising...
Actually I have been talking with a couple of friends about my dark circles around the eyes on saturday night...apparently some people think already they are a sort of permanent feature of my look...that is probably true but kind of sad at the same time...
Is there a way to get rid of those? Is there a way to be 27 years old and not think that the best is somehow gone, at some point of somebody´s life that we are not actually able to remember?
It would be cool to be like the main character of this book I am reading: able to let his mind fly back and forth throughout his own life, having consciousness of what went first and what afterwards, but in the condition of flying back to some older moments and consider them again...(by the way, the book is from Vonnegut and I am not sure this character looks really "normal"...enough of this).
The history of Riga and Charchow today, Peter the Great tomorrow...the only 2 new issues I am coping with so far...peace.

I'm waiting for the train
Subway that only goes one way
The stupid thing that'll come to pull us apart
And make everybody late
You spent everything you had
Wanted everything to stop that bad
Now I'm a crashed credit card registered to Smith -
Not the name that you called me with
You turned white like a saint
I'm tired of dancing on a pot of gold-flaked paint
Oh we're so very precious, you and I
And everything that you do makes me want to die
Oh I just told the biggest lie
I just told the biggest lie
The biggest lie

Show me the dirt pile
And I will pray that the soul can take
Three stowaways
You vanish with no guile
And I will not pay
But the soul can wait
The soul can wait
Well it is still pretty wet
With all these leaks
We’ll be fine
We’ll be fine
But if it’s still pretty wet
With all these leaks
We'll be fine, oh
And supervised
Show me the dirt pile
And I will pray that the soul can take
Three stowaways
And you vanish with no guile
And I will not pay
But the soul can wait
I felt you so much today
I know you try
You tried straight into my heart
You fly straight into my heart
Girl, I know you try
You fly straight into my heart
You fly straight into my heart
But here comes the fault...
So much for make believe, I'm not sold
So much of dreams deceive, I'm not prepared to know
Your heart makes me feel
Your heart makes me bold
For always and ever, I'll never let go
Always concealed
Safe and inside, alive!
Show me the dirt pile
And I will pray that the soul can take
Three stowaways
In a passion it broke
I pull the black from the grey
But the soul can wait
I felt you so much today...

Back on track

I moved in the new apartement with my friend Marthe...the flat is soo huge and sunny and empty in equal parts...
I live in hier, in the most turkish part of Berlin , apparently...

University began again and the courses are much better, now that I finally managed to change the main subject and landed to history, leaving the boring stuff about path dependency, insitutionalism and transition/transformation...fuck yeah!

I have been in Spain for a week, visited so many beautiful places, that I could hardly believe it! Sevilla is an amazing city, I think I would like to fall in love again in that city, if that is ever gonna happen...the sea, the food, my friends there, the dry and sunny weather have been amazing...I would higly recommend to update your priority list concerning travels and find a way to plan a visit to Andalusia: it just rocks!

The new apartment has a small but cozy extra room, so if you want to come and stay in Berlin for a while, you know you just have to let me know on time and you are welcome.

Working and studying and working keeps me busy and that is all I can wish for myself right now...the rest will come someday.

I guess that is it!
take care.

I have been woking for eight days in a row...in the last five did not sleep more than 4 hours on the average...But I have been in Budapest, that is actually a city with some rare magic...I think it is on the top three of my favourite European cities...
The faces of people over there, especially those who are a bit older (60), speak about history, changes, the time going by...I could sit for hours in a cafe in Pest and just look at the faces of the guests...
I will do it soon, and if any of you wants to join me, you are welcome...

I have been five days away from Berlin and as soon as you are back, you realize how many people are just taking drugs as a way (the only one)to enjoy their free time...I find it so boring, oh man...

Yesterday I have been to the concert of this girl, it was fine...but once more my friends and I had to discuss with some super boring German guests, who think they should have the same silence at the concert like the one they get listening the Cd at their boring, Ikea styled, with fucking Beck´s filled up apartments...shame on them and vive la vie!

Flying to Spain in one hour, trying to sum up some reasoning out of this six weeks of work and alcohol as never in my life before...she is still there all around me, cannot avoid that from happening...she is there whenever a small bite of beauty comes to me, when something extraordinary happens, when something very ordinary happens, when I am happy, when I am lonely, when I think I am over and I am not...lately she comes in my dreams pretty frequently too...

She does not know that, I do not dare to ask how she is or what she is doing there..I am so scared, really really scared, man how scared I am, that she is doing great..I am scared that some days (too) soon she will be back here and show me once more she is all I would like to have from a woman...I know it is still like that, but at least there is no visual implications so far...

You say sadness, I say sure

Bad thoughts running around at night,
A sense of inappropriate emptiness,
A creeping obsession with the past,
A loss of time,
Classes not taken,
Packs of cigarettes smoked,
once more,
The silence all around,
in the office, home, on the street
a telephone ringing
but very seldom,
calls from the old same good people.
An anger sedated only by loads of drinks,
every second day, since ages.

New Stuff I Have Been Lately Listening To

Mission of Burma - Signals, Calls, and Marches
Adele - 19
The Kills - Midnight Boom
The Gutter Twins - Saturnalia
Turandot - Puccini

Spiritual - Soulsavers

Jesus, I don't wanna die alone
Jesus oh Jesus I don't wanna die alone
My love was untrue
Now all I have is you
Jesus oh Jesus I don't wanna die alone
Jesus, I don't wanna die alone
Jesus oh Jesus I don't wanna die alone
My love was untrue
Now all I have is you
Jesus oh Jesus I don't wanna die alone
Jesus, Jesus
All my trouble
All my pain
Will leave me once again alone

Is there is something wrong with me? Am I too complicated? Did I get spoiled through my own doubts and distrust of all these things lately?
It is still so fucking cold in here...

Zwischen alten und neuen Sachen fühlt sich man einsam

Love - Love
The Walkabouts - Train leaves at eight
Soulsavers - It is not how far you fall it´s the way you land
The Drones - Wait Long By The River And The Bodies Of Your Enemies Will Float By
Love - Da Capo
Stephen Malkmus - Real Emotional Trash

17th is my number

Today is March, the 17th...

1. March, the 17th 2006: I came to Berlin with luggage, a guitar and 600 euro.
2. February, the 17th 2007: I ended my European voluntary project.
3. March, the 17th 2007: I took a flight from Düsseldorf to Sydney.
4. April, the 17th 2007: I came back in Hamburg
5. November, the 17th 2007: instead of enjoying an Interpol concert, we decided to take a break.
6. February, the 17th 2008: she left Berlin for Bologna.
7. March, the 17th 2008: I am back from a two-days-trip in Hamburg and think I miss it all.

Tuesday in the Gneisenaustrasse

There have been no great news in the last period...
The best I can write is as follows:

I am going to Hamburg on Saturday morning for the week-end...unfortunately alone.
I bought a cool bicycle today: Spring is coming....
I saw Band of Horses in a club yesterday: I liked them, and my eyes got even wet a couple of times...
I am going to Spain in April for a week, by myself...
I do not like the last album by Nick Cave and the B.S....boring...
I am not going to Italy until August, fortunately.
The song "Revival" by the Soulsavers, with M. Lanegan singing is hitting my head non-stop since Saturday night...and it is cool...
I want to see a W.Allen´s movie I have not seen yet.
I deserve more good sex.
I am still in love.

The wireless internet connection for free is back!

slippery slippery slippery slope

Don't walk the plank like I did
You will be dispensed with
When you've become inconvenient
In the harrowdown hill
Where you went to school
That's where I am
That's where I'm lying down

Did I fall or was I pushed?
Did I fall or was I pushed?
And where's the blood?
And where's the blood?

I'm coming home
I'm coming home
To make it all right
So dry your eyes

We think the same things at the same time
We just cant do anything about it

So don't ask me
Ask the ministry
Don't ask me
Ask the ministry

We think the same things at the same time
There are so many of us
So you can't count

We think the same things at the same time
There are too many of us
So you can't count

Can you see me when I'm running?
Can you see me when I'm running?
Away from them

I can't take their pressure
No one cares if you live or die
They just want me gone
They want me gone

I'm coming home
I'm coming home
To make it all right
So dry your eyes

We think the same things at the same time
We just cant do anything about it

We think the same things at the same time
There are too many of us
So you can't count

It was a slippery slippery slippery slope
It was a slippery slippery slippery slope
I feel me slipping in and out of consciousness

Monday in the Zossener strasse

I am sitting in a cafe, pretending to have something to do with my mac...my external hard drive broke up...pictures gone, music gone...realized that it is no good thing to have such a big part of your own memories stuck in a stupi sequence of 0 1 0 1...
Pretty awkward from me...
I hope everybody is doing better that I do.

Friday, just before the beginning of the end

I am nervous...for no reason, but nervous....and this week-end looks like a pretty boring one...I miss almost everything I got a year ago...and the few good new things I have got are definitely not enough...
Mr. Berlusconi is still able to tell so many bullshits in one hour...amazing...I guess he has no contender in this special field...

they tell us all the time that change is the answer, but there are moments in our life when we should feel/realize that we have all you want ...why then not taking things for what they wonderfully are, damned....why why why...???
Because we are afraid of once-for-all choices.........alternative, open, brand new, doomed, replacable, limited in time...all these adjectives are very popular and over rated nowadays, think about it...apparently we do have to think that everything can be better, all the time...I would like to hear, at least once from time to time, that we are not - fortunately - gonna live forever; that the best, maybe, is yet to come but that the best is not the absolute, is not the fucking dream that comes true...

Decisions should be taken, risks should be taken too!...once in a lifetime speeches should be screamed...and honesty should play the main role on the fucking stage of everybody´s own life...
Please, let us stop thinking that there will always be something better, cooler or whatever you say...
Because it is true that there it could be, but at the same time that is NOT gonna happen, ever...because the best is just what we have in this fucking, actual, tough - but real - life and not something sponsored by mastercard rather than easy jet...
The dream should be to do our best and not to expect the best from the universe, damned you kids born with Nutella, Barbie/Kenn and Coca Cola....
I wish to all of you to feel expirable for a second...it helps landing back on this planet...

Unkoordinierte Gedanken

Three weeks ago I left them on the table of a bar, just like that...did not realize I had lost them until it was two in the morning...I had to sleep at the restaurant...
Two weeks ago I left them home, but at least this time I thought about it all of the sudden...could not do anything, though since I had to go to work...but fortunately I met a girl that evening and spent the night at her place...
Today I left them home, once more: only when I went back from shopping I noticed my keys were not in my pocket...
I learnt to open my door without them (it is easier than you think, as long as your door is old-fashioned) and also to leave a copy in a safe place somewhere else...at least that, no?

Where is my mind?

The 10th time in Detroit

Allied Media Conference.

Fund raising during the primaries

A very smart interactive data graphic

feathers, strings, whiskers...no focus...

When as a kid it happened to me to feel lonesome, I was sure that i could talk with my pillow: I talked for hours, i was sure that it could listen and keep my thoughts for the best...I am not sure I still have the same one, though i still have one with feathers...it is unlikely that it is the same...

When I grew up a bit, I started thinking that I could do the same with my guitar, which I was playing so much that it could have even made sense...it got a name, but no clear personality, unfortunately...

After the guitar came the cats: first mine then my girlfriend´s, this last one being the most relaxed creature of the planet...that is why I thought it could be a good listener...may he was...for sure not a good advisor...

In the last years I lost confidence in this kind of confessions, and though you could think that it is better so, I strongly doubt about it...Right now I am looking all around in my room, while listening the National from 2005, considering which object should be next...or should I get another cat?

That is the reason why since months I am having a conversation with myself: it is mostly a try to get some questions answered, always the same few in the end; it usually starts early in the morning, experiences a couple of long breaks during the day due to work or reading/studying, keeps on till late at night...yesterday I was so into the conversation while having sex...scaring.

It seems my mind is still floating somewhere else as my immanent reality, for most of the time it tries to function properly...

I am going to Budapest for work between the 18th and the 2oth of April...if anybody wants an apartment in Berlin for a week-end in spring, just let me know.

Our new Master Programme in European Studies: ONLINE!

A 2-year master programme starts in September 2008. If you are interested or think somebody you know could be, please forward this link.
We have candies and chocolate bars waiting for you, if you help us!

Crazy Dunks

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_EFMTEpOeG4&feature=related

I guess the link on the right column "Bologna University, My ex-university", should be replaced by "Bologna University, my ex´s university"...small things make life pretty amazing, uh...?
Oh man

A couple of thoughts and a playlist

1. We all read in the news how women are still victims of violence, and not just in Sudan rather than in Pakistan...
The more I spend time along with them, the more I realize how many suffer from some form of violence.
Out of the three women I have been truly in love with, two suffered from violence - and not because of me, obviously (!).
In both cases it has NOT just been a slap in the face...
The number of other girls/friends of mine that have been victims of violence is huge...I guess more than an handful, and the more I spend time with friends, the more I find out about new disgusting stories...
So while I was walking in Prenzlauer Berg at five in the morning, right after having heard about the next bad story, I asked myself why on earth it is like that....and could not come out with any explanation but that the percentage of male motherfuckers in this planet is pretty high...are women in some ways exaggerating? I would not think so...

2.EU is so a bad example on how an international organization should manage its foreign policy...whether this decision of free choice for the recognition of Kosova is a wise move or not, we will probably find out in a week...whether there may have been another viable option, I am not sure...but with Spain and Romania (the 2 countries representing a seventh of the EU population) refusing the recognition, while France and Germany do, does not sound good news at all for the incoming Common Foreign Policy of the "renewed" EU...

3. The conservative vicepresident of the European Commission, Mr. Frattini, has a plan to create a pretty selective system for letting people in the EU; he also pushes for a database of migrants coming to EU...in Germany people and newspapers discussed about the plan, critizising the intellectual basis of it too...I would say it is not the best side of the EU, this one which is coming out...and when it does come from a close friend of Mr. Berlusconi is even worse.


4.Barry Adamson - Oedipus Schmoedipus
Laury Hill - Ms Hill
Thom Yorke - Complete Eraser Remixes.
Baby Dee - Safe Inside the Day
Sixteen Horsepower - Olden
Sixteen Horsepower - Folklore

The best band in town...since a decade

R A D I O H E A D

Wer will die Stasi zurück?!

Ich nicht...aber jemanden gibt´s schon...SZ darüber.

Old same story

The population of our western societies is growing older and older, and somehow there is no way to doubt that this trend shall magnify its effects in the next future.

I work in the very western side of Berlin twice a week: it looks like Maine or Wales somehow - even if I have never been in either place; this part of the city is the one that became rich after the war in a kind of fast way...nowadays next to the several embassies which grew up there in the early fifties, you see old people all over the place...centers where old people can go to live, advertisement of theatre shows that no twenty-five-years-old-person would ever dare to attend; cafés and restaurants looking fake and boring...post offices with cheesy and awefull (not even cheap!) greetings card...
Is it a positive phenomenon the one through which we are all growing older and older?
Do not get me wrong....
If the average life expectancy in Zimbabwe will eventually rise from its actual 35 years (that is a scandal and a tragedy of our times!), I will be very very happy.
But if Großvater Scholz keeps on growing older and older, more and more lonesome, more and more fixed upon his crazy ideas and believes, more and more aside from what is happening all around him until his early nineties, who is going to enjoy that? If Frau Scheidl will live until her 95, eating only saltless vegetables and tofu curry wurst, alone, angry and bitter with her family or with the memories of it, who can actually say that this is plus?

Is it good that our brain will turn into a tired and overstretched machine that has to control over a body which will still be fit in relation to that? Is it worth to get through painful treatments and deeply intrusive surgery, if the absolute difference is some more months spent on a rolling chair?
Is it not unreal and hypocritical the rhetoric of our government over "development", though combined with the apology of the elderly?

Somebody could tell me:"Well, Marco, the longer the better"...is this belief one of the new absolute of our Western morals?
I am not sure that if these people would look at themselves, they would agree with that...in the mass of old people from Berlin and from Venice, from Weimar and from Munich try, you guys, to have a look at their eyes (grey, empty, flat), to measure their patience with the rest of humanity, their loud pessimism, their inability to be on the street, see a child and just smile...it is probably bitter and progressively limiting to grow older; it is usually also very painful and full of losses (phisical, relational, mental, moral)...why do we keep on telling ourselves the story that the third (or fourth) age is a golden period of our lives? Are the first two so bad? Or is it just the last of a series of lies-that-let-us(them)-live-better?

I do think about it and wonder...

New discoveries on the side of global sad music: as if Morricone had written rock songs

The Sweetest Embrace
Barry Adamson and Nick Cave


Our time is done my love
We've laid it all to waste
One thousand moonlit kisses
can't sweeten this bitter taste
My desire for you is endless
and I'll love you 'till we fall
I just don't want you no more
and that's the sweetest embrace of all
To think we can find happiness
hidden in a kiss
Ah, to think we can find happiness
that's the greatest mistake there is
There is nothing left to cling to babe
There is nothing left to soil
I just don't want you no more
and that's the sweetest embrace of all
Ooohhh where did it begin
When all we did was lose
There's nothin' left to win
So lay your weapons down
they serve no purpose in your hands
And if you wanna hold me
then go ahead and hold me
I won't upset your plans
If it's revenge you want
then take it babe
Or you can walk right out the door
I just don't care anymore
And that's the sweetest embrace of all
Ooohhh where did it begin
When all we did was lose
There's nothin' left to win
It's over babe
And it really is a shame
We are losers you and me babe
In a rigged and crooked game
My desire for you is endless
And I love you most of all
I just don't want you no more
and that's the sweetest embrace of all

New music from Detroit

Watch the video, register and get the single! It is worth listening!
Do it, just do it!
Hier...

eight to go

I do not think anymore that what is happening around me has any kind of sense, at all...I do not even think that what I say now has any sense...I just feel lost, no method to apply or to emprove, no smart thing to say, not distant enough to say:"I do not care", just like a butterfly floating in everybody´s stomach...rancid, sour and lonely...fsch fsch fsch...

A new bunch of albums I have been listening to lately...

Jose Gonzalez - Veneer
Jose Gonzalez - In Our Nature
Hot Chip - Made in the Dark
Miles Davis - Isle of Wight Concert
The Fugs - It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest
Abbey Lincoln - Wholly Earth
Madrugada - Madrugada (still)

Wishlist

A 32Gb Ipod Touch is very tempting, a 16Gb Iphone almost as much as...

Late night aknowledgment

I have no idea about what I want, what I do not want, why and in which sense...

Sunday elections

Second turn, second mandate.

Berlin people from abroad...like me, like most.

This man, whom I had the chance to hear talking twice, is a very interesting fellow.
His website deserves to be checked out, and his tips about Berlin are worth a try, if you ever came to this place, city, this never ending stratification of tragic and unique events of European history.

A very interesting article on a very interesting subject

NY Times on Germany´s way to deal with its past.
Read it!

Protektionismus von unten

SZ über Nokia, die Deutsche und die Zeitverschwendung.

Brand new music - new old music

Múm - Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy
Mclusky - Mclusky Do Dallas
Cat Power - Jukebox
Bonnie "Prince" Billie - Ask Forgiveness
Karen Dalton - In My Own Time
Various Artists - I am not there O.S.T.
Kenney Stoltz - Below the Branches
Broken Social Scene - Spirit If
Blonde Redhead - Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons

Unbekannt

A friend of mine made me "know" Karen Dalton yesterday. She apparently released only two albums, we listened to the most popular: "In my own time"...called the Billie Holyday of the American folk music she played banjo and guitar...I like her attitude to singing...in the japanese version of her cd album, there is a citation from Bob Dylan´s Chronicles...a description of times where festivals and concert, reunion and events were taking place spontaneously all over the country...maybe becuase of the music of the "I am not there" movie, maybe because of the need of something new: either way I have been listening a lot of American folk music lately.

One Hundred Days

When the willow bends towards the end of day
And twilight falls again
To the funny sound that a blackbird makes
Twilight falls again
As no good reason remains, I'll do the same
Thinking of you
One day a ship comes in, one day a ship comes in
But I can't say how or when
But I know somewhere the ship comes in every day
There is no morphine, I'm only sleeping
There is no crime to dreams like this
And if you could take something with you
It would be right
Something good
From my fingertips, the cigarette throws ashes to the ground
I'd stop and talk to the girls who work this street, but I got business farther down
Like one long season of rain, I will remain
Thinking of you
One day a ship comes in
From far away a ship comes in
One hundred days you wait for it
And you know somewhere the ship comes in every day
There is no morphine, I'm only sleeping
There is no crime to dreams like this
And if you could take something with you
It would be bright
Just like something good
One day a ship comes in
One hundred days you wait for it
Something bright
Something so good
One hundred days
A ship comes in every day
You know it's good
You know it's good
A ship comes in every day
One day a ship comes in
Its good
When it's something good

I automatically wake up after 5 hours of sleep, when I am so lucky to fall asleep soon enough to have so many hours ahead me...so annoying! Whst should I do now?! Damned...It is five in the morning.

Rear-view mirror

Some people think they need memorable events in every day of their lives as a sort of fuelling effect on their existences; some other take that for granted, no matter what happens - turning stories or events upside down is a well-known practice all over the world...
I do not feel I belong to any of the two categories...still I guess special things make life special.

It would be kind of satisfying if I could remember any of these last weeks for something special...something not connected with huge hangovers or sex in the ladies´ restroom of some bar. Because, apart from that, and from the loads of music I have been listening to, it is so difficult for me to recall if some minor event took place last Monday or three fucking weeks ago...It is probably a matter of attitude, it could be argued, and I could agree too...the thing is that having spent three days home alone because of a cold made me realize that very vividly.

I watched movies, youtube crap, tv serials, tv shows, listened old and new music, worked a bit too, read newspapers and books, articles and magazines...now I can talk with you, him, her, anybody, about the eccentricity of Steve Albini, the similarities (I found) between Architecture in Helsinky and Broken Social Scene, the beauty and every-day-more-main-stream charme of Chan Marshall, or about Primaries in the US, the Australian Open or the right size of the glas for a Sour (at least the one size I like the most!) but I just have to admit that I am very lonely in this city.
Maybe well informed, maybe not sad or depressed anymore, probably aware that is just temporary...very alone though.

I guess Google is gonna win: my mum got a gmail account...

Playlist für einsame Berliner

The National - Boxer
Radiohead - In Rainbows (Still)
Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
PJ Harvey - White Chalk (Still)
Sons and Daughters - Gift
Band of Horses - Cease to Begin
The Beatles - The White Album
Burial - Untrue
John Vanderslice - Esmerald City
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis - O.S.T. The Assassination of Jesse James...

...coming soon:
Bonnie Prince Billy
Cat Power - Jukebox

Some more old stuff

Two years old pictures on the web.
Barbatax and I between Sardiny and Lisbon

The Spice girls will one day soon become Ministries of the Faith? A mediocre good looking high-voiced English football player will conquer prolselytes in California for the least understandable religion ever?
I truly hope so. Things do not make sense at all. That is why we usually all like fiction.

A loud lack of hope, the feeling of being in the wrong spot most of the time, a row of sleepless evenings, a girl with a boyfriend, no friends...
Plus winter.
I wish I never knew her: it is scaring for me to think that but it is just like the way it is.

South America

A friend went south.
Have a look. Patagonia.

On Apple