2006-10-23 // 03:28:23
ulf
Ha, well, I was in my early twenties when I pulled my greeting card stunts. I never did think that I would cause pain to anyone...I thought maybe I'd really confuse some and make others laugh out loud at the utter randomness of receiving something so out of the blue.

I'm neither bitter nor enthusiastic about love, but rather ambivalent. I don't spend much time or energy thinking about it when it's not in my life. Yet I'm enthusiastic about a lot of things and sometimes I think that my high degree of passion for a great many things could be the result of my not mating easily. Friends and acquaintances like to point out my high energy and enthusiasm levels on a frequent basis.

Did I try a lot? I did not. I had one girlfriend since for a period of about eight months, last year. I really wouldn't want it any other way. Gut Ding braucht Weile, and I'm not ever looking into making relationships (as in getting in and out of them, or as in making sure there's always a continuity of different ones with the shortest possible breaks in between) a habit.

^ Understand all of it very well. Both last paragraphs.

2006-10-23 // 02:57:37
ulf
Oh good. We'll get along quite well in that regard, because I really like finding, collecting and sending things. It's a love of gift-giving and a fascination with sending things off in general.

There was a time when I bought random Hallmark cards in a convenience store near my office (not sure if you get the Hallmark reference...Hallmark's the American company that everybody in the US connects with greeting cards for just about any occasion out there,) went online to find names and addresses of total strangers and then sat down to write them these cards whilst pretending that they were intimate friends or relatives and that there was some significant occasion or reason for me to congratulate them, tell them I'm sorry, or that I was thinking of them etc. I thought up some really random stories and tried to affect different kinds of handwriting to match the stories and my various writing personalities. Ah, that was a good time. I never put a return address on these not because I was afraid of engaging with confused or curious recipients but purely because I was only interested in the production and the sending of these, not in the consequences thereof.

^ Then we have smething in common, concerning creating and wrapping and writing and paking and sending and giving and in my case also receiving. I love it equally. Your story reminds me of some things i did when younger, like calling random people and making telephone quizzes pretending to be from "Radio neanderthal" etc or going into child-shops at age 15 pretending to be pregnant with a lesbian girlfriend chosing clothes for our future child. Weird things like that. Though I'd be more unsure about doing what you did, out of the already mentioned responsibility and great respect and reverence for other people's orivate emotional life and not wanting to cause painful confusions interfering in such a way. But I guess the limits are vague so.. *shrug* We'd be a strange couple now I think of it (you sure didn't) it is a funny thought. I wonder if you are bitter about love or enthusiastic. Did you "try alot" after the mentioned woman? If I may again be so bold to ask?

2006-10-23 // 02:37:58
ulf
Alright. Let me see if I have time for a foray into food transmissions before I leave for New York on Thursday. I'll be in touch once I got something figured out (I'll probably also ask my Mexican friends who send/receive food to/from relatives South of the border what foods are best suited for these sorts of care packages.) I hope you won't starve if I can't get my shit together until after my return from New York, eeks! :-P

^ Then it will be my cinema-addiction's fault, not yours! I can't believe you really do this!! It makes me happy even though nothing happenedd yet, now if that isn't nice already! You are quite a wonderful wolf man, Ulf. Actually I'm excited now!!! No matter what you send, if you send, when you send, it makes me happy you think about doing so already! Seems like I am easily satisfied eh? ;-P

2006-10-23 // 01:51:56
ulf
Sending food overseas is a little challenging of late. I rarely send or receive such anymore, because the U.S. and the E.U. have gotten a little testy with each other in regards to agricultural products of any kind. I guess it also has to do with the spread of diseases etc. For example, back in the day, my mom would send me an original Sacher Torte on occasion, but the Sacher since ceased offering overseas shipping on account of the U.S. customs making things difficult.

I would probably try to send Mexican or Tex-Mex food of the type that would keep and survive the trip, even though my specialty is sushi and my newly-acquired ambition is Ethiopian cuisine.

For some reason I first interpreted your suggestion of sending myself to cook as a tongue-in-cheek reference to cannibalism (as in, send myself, so you can cook me.) Now I'm laughing. Sheesh.

^ hahahaha great! Now that's an option I should have thought about that myself! So is this a serious offer? :-) Sounds good!!

2006-10-22 // 22:22:37
ulf
p.s. Will send food upon request to support your film going needs. Seriously.

^ What kind of food did you think of, that survives a travel from your place to mine? Or will you send yourself and cook! Then we'd fail in the mission of not meeting.

2006-10-22 // 21:45:39
ulf
I like that casual, in passing, last-word reveal of the Nazi-erbin there. I'm gonna file that away in my shadow box that is my collection of impressions of you. Like that odd rock you sometimes find on a beach and could make no sense of, but its shape was so arresting that you decided to take it home with you to examine further when you feel contemplative and odd.

^ Feel free to do so. Nazi-erbin as an odd stone on the beach..what a comparism, it makes me smile :-)

2006-10-22 // 21:14:46
ulf
Hee. If you only knew what a film-nut I am and how well I can relate to your movie-going challenges and preferences.

I'm going to spare you the details, except to commiserate and say that I too am skipping film festivals (albeit not for lack of money but lack of time) and that I will sit in a movie theater in the company of three good friends to watch Michel Gondry's Science of Sleep for the third time in exactly two hours from now.

Oh, and I feel similarly conflicted when I go to see live music. I want everybody to shut up and pay attention to the music ultimately (ok, if people go nuts and dance that is of course most welcome as well) but when music touches me it can be such a sad, desperate loneliness when there's no one within reach to shower with one's professions of bliss and ecstasy.

On the other hand those situations do sometimes lend themselves to making new friends...when a set has ended and you turn to look at the people around you, your mind still in a haze from the music, you can instantly tell who's in a similar conundrum as you (`came to see the show by themselves but need to share their excitement over the just-ended experience.) It's happened to me on occasion that such similarly lonely types not only struck up conversations with me, but sometimes even hugged or kissed me, which, knowing what you now know about my fear/addiction to touch is a rather delicately confusing mind-fuck :-)

^ I reserved cards for that film for tomorrow night. I have exactely 17euros left until the 3rd of november, total, for everything. Food? nah! Science of sleep :-) I'll survive. I have to. For all the other films :-) Concerning music so far I have mainly made positive experiences as I grew up playing the violin and playing quartetts and orchestras just helps you getting in touch with music appreciators with indeed different tastes but non the less an attentive ear. With films it should be similarily as i study film and theater science but allah it is not the way I'd like it to be out of already mentioned reasons. I wonder if I will feel deadly lonely and misunderstood in malta, as it is so small and I already know one person who moans over the mass of small talk and no time for things "like that". That is one of my greatest fears. But I think it will be a wonderful challange to drown in impressions of the sea and an island and its people, and to be all on your own and all isolated and to find a way to compensate. To be honest I look forward to it endlessly. Oh I envy you for going to see the movie tonight. And hell yes we did a damn well job considering it needs not more than time, money, a plane and a 12hrs+ ride to visit one another! Ha! We are so good :-) No need to worry about stranger-kiss-mind- fucks from a redheaded Nazi-erbin. :-)

2006-10-22 // 20:33:59
ulf
Perhaps...it's a pretty small museum, though, and I've gone through everything there two months ago, so maybe I could bring my two companions along and they could check out everything while I head straight to Birkenwald/Buchenwald and remain there until they're through. I need to bring my friends because on the first floor of that museum is the *only* Viennese Café that is any good in all of North America as far as I'm aware. I just have to share the joys of that with my American bosom buddies. Of course the last time I was in New York I went to the Neue Gallery once with a friend and then one more time on my own, so maybe that could be the winning strategy this time around, should my two companions' perusal of the entire exhibited collection not give me enough time to indulge in the enormity and splendor of the magnificent Birkenwald/Buchenwald.

^ Sounds like you have a plan there. Go for it. I am never sure if I prefer going to see movies alone or with someone by my side. I often go alone. But usually, no matter how bad the film and not to mention when the film is gorgeous, I am so full of thoughts that I need to share and exchange and listen I sometimes am sad I went alone. And when I go with someone there are often high chances that the need to exchange is not mutual and we go back to the "normal other stuff" within half an hour and that leaves me even more desperate lol So, I have my handful of friends (less than a handful) to share that with, and those are not in Vienna currently or have no time..and I no money anyway. Can you imagine I did not see a single film displayed on the Viennale because I have no money for it? I hate it. I hate reading the catalogue throughly (which i, masochistic as I am, do again and again) and realizing how much I am missing. But oh well. Have fun with your frinds in museum and café then :-)

2006-10-22 // 20:02:00
ulf
Yes, the Birkenwald/Buchenwald piece one of the five paintings that were returned to Maria Altman earlier this year...the only one of the five I really give a crap about, speaking of which. I will go to New York again on Thursday and hope that all five Klimts are still on display at the Neue Gallerie (»link) - I believe they only bought Adele Bloch Bauer I, but have been exhibiting the other four on loan from Frau Altman. I think I'm going back just to look at Birkenwald/Buchenwald for as long as my friends will tolerate it (or perhaps I should go on my own to not feel obligated to leave before I got my fill.)

^ There are only few people I like going to museums with and most of them are scattered across the world. As much as I hate being pushed, I hate having to stay longer than I want to. And when people don't go independently but look at what I look..I just freak out when tht happens lol So, maybe you should go alone :-)

2006-10-22 // 19:07:41
ulf
Having been born into a family that never did touch or did so only very seldom (a kiss on a birthday, perhaps, but that was it) this image slowly took on a meaning a few steps from your chosen title and related description. Yet what I'm thinking/feeling overlaps with your chosen title a great deal also.

To this day I still have to fight this involuntary reflex to shrink away from spontaneous and unexpected affectionate body contact from acquaintances and friends, for example.

And should I start to feel intimate towards somebody I sometimes begin to worry that I might suffocate them in my attempts to catch up on all that touching that I missed out on as a child (an impossible mission, it seems.)

This personal quandary makes me both profoundly heartbroken and feel alive with exhilaration. Touch takes such effort and is so wild (not having grown up with it) that it's as exciting and dangerous to me as boxing must appear to others.

Then, expanding from that personal interpretation on out, I find an indirect suggestion in this photograph that perhaps we humans are a little bit like trees and actually need our respective spaces or our branches can't extend as they should, or leaves can't get sufficient sunlight and our roots can't anchor in the ground sufficiently. But it is also good to be in the company of other trees for mutual protection from the elements.

I find this to be the most evocative photograph of yours that I've come across so far. I love it to bits and pieces.

Jakob and I had a brief exchange about Klimt's Birkenwald/Buchenwald painting a while back. I saw the original in New York in August. Do you know it? I must have a thing for tree trunks.

Oh...and you took the borders off, here ;-) Something I shan't tire of pointing out to you when you do/did it.

^ Ulf, dear friend, how come you write this when I had all day "free" and now went to work, switch on my computer and bang here you are writing so personally and concerning a topic which I lately have come to be obsessed with in context of friendship, love, forbidden love, strangers, family and us ourselves; touch. I could kiss and smack you for writing it this very moment, which both might be spontaneous in real life and noth would make you flinch away, BUT as we are on different parts of the planet there is no reason think about that further. I will get back at this. And agree that it is one of my fave works. And I myself am obsessed with birches and trees in general. Oh and while we are at it, that particular way of cropping...similar as my theme of wrapped things..goes through my work at least 2 or 3 years back, when I started photography. So it means alot somebody appreciated this particular piece. It is close to my former home where I lived with my "lost love", I avoid that place as good as I can, I am very hypersensitive towards smell and sight when it comes to triggering memories. I sometimes need it to revisit those places. That was one of those..times. I think I got my stuff out of my old home to carry it to my new room around that time. So touch and forbidden touch and longing for touch and unsatisfying touch was a topic back then (friends, love) as well as it is now (new feelings for someone who hardly touches and if so only very..directly) so... a kiss and a smack for writing this now, Ulf, my dear Freundin. Talk later -Lia PS: Are you kidding me, Klimt is one of my earliest painting-experiences and reaches back into my childhood thanks to my mother. I own various books and as I do adore the Jugendstil- idealistic womenportraits and mythological macarbre and vivid paintings alot I also adore some of his less known work, or rather, work that is less connected with him in general, so yes, I know what you are referring to. So you saw the original? because my various print versions and those on the internet vary endlessly in colour and toning.

^ the removal of borders was also to annoy somebody a little but it was rather a teasing gesture :-) despite that, yep, the size. But I still prefer the frame in general. yadda yadda.

^ before I forget: »link this is about touch as well.

2006-02-09 // 15:54:23
stEVE
Gorgeous image - your stock of expired 500 film is amazing, this colour belongs to you. The colour of your personal space?

^ hmmm interesting question..as I do not even "like" the colures in that sense :-) but yes,worth to think about... *goes and thinks*

2006-02-09 // 14:20:40
curiousme
i live in teh city, and sometimes it;s hard to get personal space unless i stay in my room or go on the roof...

another beautifull taken polaroid.. teh shaddows i really love.. across the textures ground..

^ thanks so much

2006-02-09 // 10:28:34
CecileA
I really like this...words and picture really fit well together as if they were naturally complementary. Nice, really nice...

^ glad you see it that way. Looked inviting to combine it with the title :-)

2006-02-09 // 10:22:44
morganx99

. . . : beautiful photo and interesting words

How do you get those subjects? I really enjoy your daily words!!! GRACIAS!!

^ Oh, finally someone else who enjoys to read and CONNECT the words to the images, it is so rare! Thanks so much. For the question: just in my head...

2006-02-09 // 08:17:38
artpunk
Wonderful composition and so appropraite for the title and interesting description/discussion!
:-)>

^ Another joyous reader, thank you, artsy man.