Don’t neglect me, baby…

…I want you to be my conspiracy.

———————

I love those black crowes lyrics.

As “summer” has come and rained, and with me going to California for the summer in 2.5 weeks, I’ve been pretty busy doing stuff lately.  Things like grading exams, packing up unnecessary stuff into boxes, exercising, chilling wif my lady, ya know, life.

I downloaded a Black Crowes show last night and it is from 3 nights ago in Columbus, Ohio.  First off, it’s so cool that I can be in central Europe and have music that is 3 days old blasting in my headphones.  Secondly, I remember Columbus, Ohio from the summer of 1991.

Me, and Mark and his dad drove to Ohio so Mark and I could try and qualify for the US Junior Amateur in golf.  Why did we drive to Ohio?  Well, the course that the teenage golfers could play in Ohio to try and qualify was a famous golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus called (I think) Muirfield.  Every year there is a golf tournament played there called “The Memorial” and the tournament is held on Memorial Weekend.  It has permanent TV camera towers on many of the holes, which had some of the widest fairways I had ever seen.

It took us about 5-6 days to drive there and we played golf a few times along the way.  I remember clearly (more or less) hitting golf balls at a driving range in Albuquerque, New Mexico on the 4th of July, the day we departed.  It had been a hot 13-hour drive to get there and it was awesome seeing the thunderstorm happening down the hill as we were hitting balls.  We also played golf somewhere in Chicago and Indianapolis, both famous courses that were ranked in the top 100 in America.  You may not know this but I may have played about 10 of those courses, but this was back in the day, in the parlance of our times.

It turned out there were 2 golf courses there, one for the tournament and one for the members.  I shot a 92 the first day that should have easily been 85 but those greens kicked my ass.  The next day I played like a man posessed in one of my best rounds ever, a 76 on a tighter golf course.  I think I’ve shot 76 in official tournaments less than 5 times so that’s a pretty big deal.  Considering I haven’t played golf in 18 months or something crazy like that, I’m interested to see what I’ll shoot.  Then again, I probably will not play by the rules this time. I may move the ball around a bit and even give myself a mulligan!  Oh, the times have changed.  I used to eat breathe and sleep golf back when I was 16/17 and  now I can’t remember my last round.  That’s gonna change soon.  Golf is singing, “Don’t neglect me, baby…”

Getting it together

23 days until I am on a plane to California for the summer baby!  I got a pizza in the oven, was just at the fitness studio, went by the Jos Fritz to get my photos from the exhibition and also was at L’egere cafe for a large coffee and to work on my novel.  I was working on the scene at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Palestine.  This is not too difficult to write in a way because a lot of it more or less happened.  The tricky part is having the protagonist’s attitude come through the words rather than just mine.  Remember, the majority of the character, plot, and scenes are fiction.  They did not happen to me.  There are stories in it that are real, only because some stories are good as fiction or non-fiction.  The part of the book in Israel has a chance to be poignant for several reasons.  First, the character has been living in Germany many years and is having difficulty staying in Germany.  He is Jewish but does not practice it.  The connection that Germany and Israel have, or rather what binds them is about as intense as any other nation’s except for the United States.  The history of the Jews laid bare, as he tries to make sense of the injustice that a small-minded bureaucracy has caused against the greater story of the relative peace in the world at the beginning of the 21st century.  Iraq and Afghanistan notwithstanding (and I know but they are very much part of the world scene), the freedom of movement and of opportunity that enlightening individuals of this century are unparallelled.  True, some people throughout the ages have been able to transcend whatever caste-like categorization a society had but the real story is about all of those who could transcend but nonetheless were snuffed out, killed senselessly, imprisoned, or a host of other undignified endings to people who really could exist and take advantage of the moment, of that time.

So, coming back to my point, the protagonist’s trip to Israel is a codifying experience, in terms of suddenly being in the position of knowing how lucky he is, all things considered, of being able to put things into perspective as they’re happening.  That’s what this character is about, and that ability is what’s going to accelerate the story once he returns to Germany to deal with The Situation.  Or so that’s my plan.

Box two is packed

So I haven’t had any emails or takers on my apartment for August and September but I am still packing up some of my things so that whoever lives here would not be tempted to pilfer too much of my stuff.   But the beauty is, I love “stuff” but I wouldn’t be that bummed if almost all of my stuff got stolen.  The only things that I don’t want to have to deal with having been stolen would be my laptop and/or external harddrive and my wallet and perhaps my passport, cell phone.  I love a lot of my cowboy shirts and my good pillow but it’s amazing that almost everything I have is not a prized possession, or rather maybe it is but I’m able to let it go at a moment’s notice.  That has been one of the best things about my life, the ability to not need everything.  Living/travelling with a backpack can really help you realize that things are only crucial while you have them.  They aren’t when they aren’t with me.

Box two, mostly books and clothes so far, has been packed.

Hiking the Argentine Trail

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090624/ap_on_re_us/us_sc_governor_where

Crazy Boss Frog Governor Mark “I’m not black” Sanford, the guy who wants his state’s schools to disintegrate because he’s afraid of the future deficits has spent the past 5-6 days AWOL.  Aides said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail, what soon became  a new euphemism for the scandalicious perversity du jour.  Whoring around?  Drug binge? Botox? Religious pilgrimmage?  And how the hell doesn’t your wife know where you are?  The state of South Carolina, god bless it’s secessionist arrogance, has not had an elected leader for a few business days.

It’s amazing, such a story.  At first, I didn’t really care about the Sanford missing thing as it bubbled up monday morning.  He’s hiking the Appalachian Trail, aides tell us.  Now he was seen flying back to Atlanta airport from a flight returning from… Buenos Aires?  You gotta be shitting me.

When asked what he was doing there, “driving along the coast” was his answer.

What?  Now I’m intrigued about this story.  What the hell was he doing there?

Exhibition and aftermath

Before the exhibition

Alex at the piano, a chill vibe but a great time

Che say geiz ain't geil, buy buy!

First one in almost 2 years

I have a photo exhibition tonight, my first in nearly 2 years.  It all started in may 2005 and since then I have had about 15 exhibitions in Germany, Holland, Peru, Argentina, California and Montenegro.  There will also be a buddy of mine playing piano and singing and I am looking forward to having a good time tonight.

I’ll try and update ya more and upload some photos tomorrow or Monday.

8 years ago today

June 16, 2001 — I landed in London, my first time to Europe.  It was overwhelming, with the masses of people behind barricades trying to see loved ones coming off my plane, pre 9/11 world.  I went to a pub with a perfectly ridiculous English pub name like the Camel and the Leaf or something.  I couldn’t really sleep at the hostel and at 4am I was sort of wandering around the station but there were no trains for hours so I took a taxi to the main train station with the fast trains to the continent.

I was on the very first train of the day, like 5:56am or something and remember coming out of the darkness with nothing but green pastures on both sides as we whizzed by.  I arrived at Paris Gare d’ Nord and while in the metro trying to figure out how to say “I would like an apple” in French, I watched two guys pickpocket another guy and when the victim turned to catch one of the guys, he turned out to be the guy who didn’t have the wallet anymore.  That guy was running down the other direction and was gone.  Welcome to Europe, I thought and grabbed my oversize backpack more tightly.

8 years later, I have visited 40 more countries.  London is actually one of the cities I have visited the most, like 5-6 times along with Amsterdam and Basel and Cologne as well.  The next new country I’m going to visit?  To be honest, this is one of the first times in awhile I didn’t know which new country I would go to but I’ll be in the States all summer but I don’t have tooOoooo much work for the next 2 weeks so I could do a daytrip to Liechtenstein.  It’s 4hours each way but it’d be a shame to not get that and Luxembourg which are “just around the corner”.

Grapes in the Black Forest outside my window

Those are grapes growing in the Black Forest.

Schnitzel und schupfnudeln

a simple man lunch of schnitzel already breaded, schupfnudeln with a red pepper and mushroom sauce.

my first class didn’t happen but i was there.

i did some writing in The Newropean and finished that particular journal.

i made a new t-shirt that i hopefully will wear at the exhibition on saturday and it says Bobbele.

i had a class with 3 retired ladies in a large department store that could go bankrupt at any time. at first we talked of incontinence.

i went to the supermarket to buy said man food.

i went jogging while listening to a new crowes show from june 4 2009 biloxi.

showered, cooked and listening to howard stern.

1:04pm

Art in Basel

From the Van Gogh exhibition in Basel

Another Van Gogh in Switzerland

At Art Basel, the largest modern art exhibition every year!

Do you like your balls spiked as well?