Today is one of those days when I feel like going on a vacation; or rather: when I feel like I desperately need one. I dream of a deserted island; blue sea; white sand; sunshine; books; sleeping & eating - eating & sleeping. No one to talk to; nothing to think about; nothing to care about. My soul hanging loose.

I'm afraid it's more than any travel business can offer.

Michael Jackson

Who really died yesterday, around 11.30pm CET?

Hadn't the person called Michael Jackson become a simulacrum of himself in so many different ways? A man larger than life; a star - lost maybe behind and between and among his fame and the imaginary it entails; a black man turned into a white man; a human face operated into an uncanny mask. A body-project. A musical project. A myth. The king of pop.

So, who died yesterday, around 11.30pm CET?

Still learning a lesson, this time with Cinderella

Allright, so I've been reconsidering this whole shoe business. When you think about it, Cinderella's story is pretty intriguing:

What is it really about the shoe? It is a sign of recognition and identification - the shoe functions as a kind of symbolic ID. Knowing nothing of the mysterious woman (particularly not her name, the ultimate signifier of identity), all the prince is left with is an object, or rather: a commodity (and it is a commodity of femininity, of course. Think Sacher-Masoch and fetishism, and you know what I'm talking about). But isn't it odd that a commodity should be the proof of your identity? I mean, seriously, what are the chances that in the whole kingdom there is only one person who can fit this shoe without having to cut off her toe or heel?

She must have had a particularly small foot; and isn't it very telling that the shoe doesn't fit the sisters because it is too small? How different would the story have been told if Cinderella did have, let's say, shoesize 44? But of course, if the shoe would have been too big, there wouldn't have been the possibility for her sisters to show the utter determination in trying to fit this shoe: namely, that they were willing to cut off their own toes or heels; thus sacrificing parts of their own body to fit an ideal of femininity.

So Cinderella's identification is enabled through a commodity and a commodity that implies a particular kind of feminity (small, frail, etc.). But it gets more complicated. Because the shoe is an emblem of a masquerade - Cinderella has to leave the ball (and her shoe) behind, because she was going to risk revealing the guise at a certain hour. What the prince is looking for is a mask; a figment of a night's charade; he's looking for a princess that does not exist; a princess whose carriage turns into a pumkin at midnight. (And I ask you this one thing: why didn't the shoe disappear or change back into a cabbage?)

Cinderella, thus, is a kind of drag queen for one night, if you think about it. Her identity - the one the prince is looking for to reveal by shoeish means - is a fake; it's a drag. And that's probably why the name wouldn't have worked. You can change names, you can't change feet. Cinderella is - when you think about it this way - a story about the uniqueness of bodies; the uniqueness of female bodies, the uniqueness of a female nature.

Though in the end, obviously, Cinderella isn't about magical drag at all; about femininity as a sort of drag. It is about the return of your real (female and social) idenity: Cinderella deserved to be a princess. She deserved to wear small glass slippers and ride a white horse. Because the magical masquerade of the night of the ball wasn't a masquerade at all - before her father died and her stepmother took over, she used to be a noble woman, not a maidservant counting peas.

And the morale of this little story is: The true (read: heterosexual) love of your life will make your real identity appear; it will bring the shoe that reveals it all: your worthiness, your femininity, your social standing, your merit.

And isn't that, I ask you, a bit too much to expect from a person?

Learning a lesson with Madame Bovary

Don't let yourself be fooled: the biggest myth bourgeois ideology ever set into place is the so called love of your life. I believe it has kept women all over the western hemisphere within the past 200 years or so from being content and emotionally balanced, realistic and autonomous. It is utterly bewildering to me how well-educated, funny, mature, intelligent women turn into 7-year-old girls that wanna wear a pink princess dress and become Cinderella when it comes to talking about meeting the one. It seems to me that, when it comes to the mystical love of your life and - particularly - its disappointments, we haven't really moved on from the 19th century and Madame Bovary.

So listen gal: There just ain't gonna be anybody walking around with a glass shoe that fits your foot. You're always gonna be like Cinderella's sisters: cutting of your toe to fit the shoe and smiling through the tears the pain causes you. And the worst thing is that you are going to tell yourself that it is absolutely normal that shoe hurts you; nay, you're not even gonna notice the shoe hurts you. Or else, you're going to meet someone who doesn't really have a shoe at all, or only, say, an ugly old sneaker. So you're gonna spend your time thinking about this person out there that supposedly has the glass shoe- your glass shoe -, and how you were never a sneaker person anyway, and why should you spend the rest of your life with a Adidas sneaker when you could have a Gucci glass stiletto.

But honey, why don't you just fucking get out there and get the goddam shoe for yourself?

I am discovering Eric Satie's piano music. It makes me realize how much I miss playing myself. I miss making music; literally producing it with my body; feeling it in my own hands; feeling my body shift and sink into a melody, against the instrument. I miss the touch of the keys as they give way under the weight of my fingers. I miss the way you forget about yourself; and the way you feel yourself while making music.

On a day like this, it seems like the only way to comfort me.

Things learnt in an ordinary week

#1 I sleep badly when I didn't have enough food. Even if I'm dead tired.

#2 I know nothing about my sleeping habits. Being tired is certainly no criteria for sleeping well.

#3 Try as you may, you ain't gonna change that fast. (By "fast" I mean a period of, say, a week.)

#4 Sometimes you do change though but it goes so slowly you hardly even notice it yourself until someone tells you something about you and you're like: "hey, what, this is me? when did that ever happen?", but then, the longer you think about it, you realize it's true.

#5 I want to live in an urban city. I never left province; though I gradually moved to larger cities.

#6 I want to teach but I don't want to have students to talk back at me. Or rather: I only want nice students and motivated students and smart students but not the precocious kind who are gonna be testing out their limits like fucking three-year-old toddlers in the midst of their terrible twos.

# 7 I'd rather be 95% dictatorial teacher, 5% buddy teacher; right now, it's the other way around and I have to laugh about my 5% Kim Yong-Il.

# 8 I can write and work more or less 24/7; no problem. The problem is stopping again. So that's why they say workaholic. I think I preferred cigarettes as an addiction, thank you.

Please explain the world to me

According to a recent survey, 6% of the Austrian population would rather want a military dictatorship than democracy. Six percent!!! That's 480.000 people!!!

Fucking idiots. Go fuck yourself and move to North Korea.

Kindliches Denken

An manchen Tagen der kindlich-sinnlos-vergebliche Hass und Trotz auf die Welt und alle Menschen, die nicht sie sind. Als ob man jeden - egal wen; selbst den fremden Passanten auf der Straße - anschreien müsste, weil er lebt, wo sie doch tot ist. Manchmal die Unerträglichkeit des Weiterlebens; des eigenen und des der anderen.

Die Rückkehr in die eigene Kindheit ist an manchen Tagen auch, so lernst du: Den anderen vorwerfen, dass sie nichts getan haben.

So Cold the Night

Ich fahre weg und komme an in der Stadt; ich sehe: die Türme den Fluss und den einfahrenden Zug vor mir. Ich fühle (Reiter überm Bodensee) erst jetzt - und mit Schrecken - die Traurigkeit den Schmerz die Agonie dieses Lebens, das meines war und doch nicht wirklich gelebt. Ich könnte weinen erst jetzt; und habe erst jetzt Mitleid mit mir selbst; Mitgefühl für diese Person, die ich war und immer noch bin; betäubt in ihrer Traurigkeit (ein Vogelstrauss). Ich bin traurig für mich um mich um die Zeit, die verging (verstrichen ist - ausgestrichen auch); scheinbar ohne mich und trotz mir.

Denn paradoxerweise verrinnt die Zeit nicht nur während des Glücks wie im Flug (so sagt man, ja), sondern auch im Unglück; oder vielleicht ist es tatsächlich so, dass wir die Zeit vergessen verdrängen: die Psyche bemüht, um jeden Preis nicht sich zu erinnern, nicht wahrzunehmen, nicht hinzusehen. Was bleibt, ist ein Nichts, ein Loch in der Lebenszeit; eine Fermate - gedehnt bis zur Unkenntlichkeit und leer bis ins Unverständliche hinein. Oder doch, etwas bleibt vielleicht doch - eine Erinnerung: die des Körpers; die Erfahrung eines Gefühls, welche das Leben trotz allem immer in uns hinterlässt - uns beeindruckt, im Sinne von: uns etwas eindrückt.