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I still remember all of it as if it happened last week, but it was summer then and it will soon be christmas now. it was my last night in paris, we had picked up a friend of theirs who just arrived from belgium. I forget if he was in brussels or antwerp. they were on their 7th joint or so for the day and I didn't inhale more than a fraction, I was too scared of getting the "pot weirdies" as someone once told me it was called, although we weren't smoking pot but hash. we had taken the wrong metro home from the rehearsal studio, it was my fault, we had to walk the long way home but somehow through a miracle there was a small shop right by the metro station that sold beer even though it was after midnight, a rare thing in paris. they were talking about music, I didn't really have much to say, I was sad because I had to go home and because of something he had told me 2 days before. not to get too attached, he didn't look at me in the same way he used to when I first arrived, nor the way he did when he visited me in london a month prior. I was sitting next to him on the sofa. I don't remember what they were talking about. I think one of the others were showing a music video on the computer. always something obscure from the 80's, I do like that kind of music, but I don't have much to say when it comes to discussing it. I reached for another beer, I was wearing a ring that he had given me the day before, he bought it for me at the flea market that I took them too, at porte de montreuil, (julia took me there when I visited her, when was it? 3 years ago? time flies.) A guy that I used to work with always used to open his beer bottles with help of the ring he always wore so I thought I should try it. instead of opening my bottle the beer cap chipped away a tiny piece of my ring, leaving a small hole. horrified I turned to him and said something along the lines of "oh shit! I broke the ring!" I hesitated, then I said in a voice meant only for him "I was going to wear it forever". he looked at me and said " nothing lasts forever" I can't remember if he held my hand. my whole worldd were falling apart when I heard him say those words. on his right arm he had my name carved in with a scalpel, a failed drunken attempt at making home made tattoos. I sometimes wonder if he still has the scar of my name, if that will last forever.

Truth will out.

Is it tonight that changed my life

In England, and I was sure in America, they loved animals

So, I am walking down the street, my hands sticky from beer and Indian kebab that we consumed on the stairs of the newly renovated and richly ornamented church at St Boniface, if you know what I mean, it was sunny and pleasant and full of people swooshing by, there are always so many people on the streets of the African area in Brussels, there was sound of music from someone learning how to play the ukelele, or cymbalon, when I bumped into long-lost friends, shreds and pieces of previous lives, in other, far-away countries.

Stranger things must have happened though. Have you ever heard the story of Yusuf Islam?

Steven Georgiou, born in Marylebone, London, England),[8] was the third child of a Greek-Cypriot father, Stavros Georgiou (b. 1900),[9] and a Swedish mother, Ingrid Wickman (b. 1915).[10] He has an older sister, Anita, and brother, David.[8] The family lived above Moulin Rouge, the restaurant that his parents operated on the north end of Shaftesbury Avenue, a short walk from Piccadilly Circus in the Soho theatre district of London. All family members worked in the restaurant.[8] His parents divorced when he was about 8 years old, but they continued to maintain the family restaurant and live above it.
Although his father was Greek Orthodox and his mother a Swedish Baptist, Georgiou was sent to a Catholic school, St. Joseph Roman Catholic Primary School in Macklin Street, which was closer to his father's business on Drury Lane.[11] Georgiou developed an interest in piano at a fairly young age, eventually using the family baby grand piano to work out the chords, since no one else there played well enough to teach him. Inspired by the popularity of The Beatles, at age 15 he extended his interest to the guitar,[4] convinced his father to pay £8 for his first instrument, and began playing it and writing songs.[12] He would escape at times from his family responsibilities to the rooftop above their home, and listen to the tunes of the musicals drifting from just around the corner;[8] from Denmark Street, which was then the centre of the British music industry.[4] Later, Stevens has emphasized that the advent of West Side Story in particular affected him, giving him a "different view of life", he said in 2000, on a VH1 Behind the Musicprogramme.[13] With interests in both art and music, he and his mother moved to Gävle, Sweden, where he attended primary school (Solängsskolan). In Gävle he also started developing his drawing skills after being influenced by his uncle Hugo Wickman, a painter.[14]
He attended other local West End schools, where he says he was constantly in trouble, and did poorly in everything but art. He was called "the artist boy" and mentions that "I was beat up, but I was noticed".[15]He went on to take a one-year course of study at Hammersmith School of Art,[16]as he considered a career as a cartoonist. Though he enjoyed art (his later record albums would feature his original artwork on his album covers),[15] he wanted to establish a musical career and began to perform originally under the stage name "Steve Adams" in 1965 while at Hammersmith.[16][17] At that point, his goal was to become a songwriter. Among the musicians who influenced him were Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, blues artists Lead Belly and Muddy Waters,[18] John Lennon, Biff Rose (who played on his first album), Leo Kottke,[15] andPaul Simon.[19] He also wanted to emulate composers who wrote musicals, like Ira Gershwin andLeonard Bernstein. In 1965 he signed a publishing deal with Ardmore & Beechwood and cut several demos, including "The First Cut Is the Deepest".[20]

:D

- Should we?
- Fuck it, we, re young!

Julia - Eternal synopsis

You want to get saved by her,
get close to her,
tame her,
own her,
disect her carisma and magic.

And finally learn how to be like her.
But you are ashamed of these egoistic, parasitlike
intentions.
You are intimidated by her being,
and for each centimetre that you get closer to her you become more and more nervous.

Because she is so effortless, so real.
Because she is the opposite of everyone you know.

Time passes.

And you will achieve your goal eventually.
You will get close to her.
The two of you will create stories together.
Millions of stories.

And you will realize that your inner conflict can only be solved by her breakdown.

By you feeling superior, that you have the upper hand.

And that too happens.

But you will, stil and always, respect her too much to tell her that your roles have changed.

And in fact. They have not.

Because even when she will be down at the very bottom
and you will still have still have your position
somewhere in the safe middle

you will still remain the observer
and she the hero of the story.

Korean cafe

"In Korea, there are many types of cafes with diverse themes. Cafes are not just for drinking coffee and meeting people, but also for fun activities. For example, in a so-called 'Dress cafe', you can wear any dresses you want while you drink coffee or drinks. You can also take pictures. Boys can wear tuxedo in this kind of cafe. For a special celebration, you can go to a dress cafe and dress up like a bride and a groom (with your boyfriend). You can also rent a room in the dress cafe for just you and your boyfriend. In dress cafe you can also wear special clothes like old fashion school uniforms of Korea. There are lots of accessories, so you can match them with your clothes. There is cafe called 'Jail Cafe'. This cafe really looks like jail. You can have drinks in the prison. The clerk in jail cafe dresses up like police. You can also have fun with handcuffs, pistol and so on. In 'Cat or dog cafe', you can enjoy your drinks with cute dogs and cats. There are about 30 kinds of dogs and cats in this cafe. So if you want to see many kinds of dogs and cats, 'Cat and Dog cafe' would be nice to go. You can also bring your dogs or cats to the cafe. There is 'Cave Cafe' also. You can have drinks in cave. The cave is decorated with beautiful lights. Even though the cafe is in the real cave, there are no bats of course. 'Trompe-l'œil cafe' is really funny cafe. Trompe-l'œil is Franch word which means trick. There are lots of funny realistic paintings in this kind of cafe. If you take pictures in front of the paintings, it really looks like you are in that paintings. There are famous painter's paintings like Pablo Ruiz Picasso. In 'Board game cafe', you can play any kind of board game you can imagine. And, 'Hello Kitty Cafe' is a cafe for those who love Hello Kitty. You can enjoy Kitty Cake which looks like Kitty, and cafe latte in a Kitty cup.
[edit]"

Martynka Wawrzyniak

Chocolate, 2010 from MARTYNKA WAWRZYNIAK on Vimeo.

Lust, desire, performance, endurance, a bad joke on a very boring day, subordination, torture, chocolate.

... Take most people, they're crazy about cars. They worry if they get a little scratch on them, and they're always talking about how many miles they get to a gallon…I don't even like old cars. I mean they don't even interest me. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake ...

Aleksandra # - My favourite means of motion

This is not a very important statement in any way, but I love trains. So much classier than riding a wonky city bike home from the club or a third-class seat in a low-cost rienair flight. I never met the love of my life onboard or witnessed a murder on the Midnight Express or anything like that, but I heart the beauty of banal travel details. The odd co-passengers, saints and sinners, newspaper readers, egg eaters, doggies on the way to the sea. The smell of coal when you pass an industrial town (or cabbage near Korsnäs paper factory, welcome home to Gävle). The sound of speed as we accelerate through never-ending meadows and sudden night in the tunnel. The modern dandy listening to sorrowful 80ies ballads a bit too loud and you can only imagine the kind of person broke his heart. Godforsaken idyll where some older ladies get off at a station with rusty signs. Ajaccio-Bastia that felt like a roller coaster, ride interrupted by sheep resting on the rails. Changing trains in the middle of nowhere in Morocco on a star-spangled night. Having the compartment all to ourselves. Or sharing it with an obese Ukrainian who snored through the night so I could enjoy the sunrise on the nighttrain from Ivanofrankivsk to Kyiv. Life in a dining-car - pretty good title for a memoir?







Freeze frames from the film "Pociąg" by Jerzy Kawalerowicz

Julia # - Etcetera

Tuesday evening, I had a skype date with a close friend I hadn't seen for a while. Now we both had a strong urge to talk. My friend had just met someone. I could tell it was serious. We had earlier both been victims of falling in love with complicated souls that promised understanding and willingness to share problems and turn loneliness into... I don't know... fun! Anyway, these were promises that never got to be fulfilled as they, the objects of our feelings had themselves to be saved first and frankly - neither my friend nor I were very good at saving people; quite the opposite.

So the conversation began. Soon enough, after my fiend had told me all about this fantastic new person and all her assets and great sides (I was half-listening, I had heard these stories before, every love story starts in a similar way) we started to discuss the ideal woman. She was beautiful of course, but that was so obvious it hardly had to be mentioned. And besides, beauty is something so easy manipulated it can't constitute a serious criterion.

I said - my woman is... me. We're interchangeable, always wanting to know more about each other, my ideal woman is memorizing my freckles, she sees solar systems in my birthmarks, and I analyze secret codes in what she mumbles when she talks in her sleep. My ideal woman always wants to be close to me, to be my saviour, although she'll keep telling me I'm the one saving her. My ideal woman is the opposite of loneliness; she's the second half, the very essence of support. My ideal woman is a babushka that carries me inside her, that is encapsulated by me, and I am swallowed by her and I carry her on the inside of my ribs.
- That is ridiculous! my friend interrupts me. I can see in the web cam he has started to prepare his dinner while I was holding my speech. You're not looking for a partner, you're looking for someone to fill the void inside of you, he states and continues: the ideal woman is not someone who solves all your problems. You're looking for some kind of life solution in your woman. Those things should be done through the help of a psychologist! I'm pretty sure that my ideal woman will create even more problems in my life; she'll stir everything around and replace all parameters with chaos.
- So you're not looking for someone to share everything with? I ask.
- Of course I do, he says. But not for an extension of myself. Quite the opposite, I want a lover, travel buddy, cell mate, and best friend. Someone judging my life from the outside, respecting it but offering alternatives through her own behaviour. Someone so independent that it hurts, someone that I will never feel that I own, someone who will always surprise me as she is thinking in different schemes than I, someone screaming at me, fighting with me, teaching me things, learning from me, together we'll reach new levels, combining our strengths, focusing on each others strong sides. But not melting into one person, that sounds ... unhealthy. Scary, terrifying even!
- But that's the point! I reply. You won't find the ideal partner without risking anything! And once you find her - and once she finds you - you will both live with your feelings on the outside. That's the most beautiful thing people can do.

And then just like that, I lost the internet connection. But I'm quite sure the discussion will continue.

Julia # - Paul de Vree

Originally a poet, then turned into an artist. Avant-garde literary theoretician.

(I would love to be described exactly like that )