August 1 – 6, 2005. Geneva.
I’m using an analog notebook, spiral-bound, it cost 33¢ for a 70-pager at Walgreen’s, a real deal. And a pen, my favorite kind for the last few years, a Pilot P-700 fine gel pen, with a nib that looks like a hypodermic. I get these for about 40¢ each at Office Max. That’s my word processing system now: pen and notebook: no batteries, random access, water-resistant, crash-proof, low theft risk, easy to turn off and on.
In the plane, as we wait for takeoff, the video screens soothe us with images of gnarly computation: sped-up clouds, waterfalls, reflective ripples, flocks of birds. (Not fire, though, not in a plane cabin.) Gnarly continuous-valued CAs would be okay, too, I think. Paradoxically, once we’re in the air and in a position to look at gnarly soothing nature on our own, the steward requests that everyone close their window shades so as to bring into greater prominence the video screens, which begin showing CBS reruns. We’re to look at evil, farty consensus-reality consumerist propaganda instead of the gorgeous clouds right outside our winged tin-can. Ain’t it awful.
It was raining when we got to Geneva.
I took a walk by this great old house like a castle.
Peter Bruegel passed by the Lake of Geneva as a young man, coming back from his visit to Italy. He used this scene as the setting for his paiting, “The Harvesters,” which hangs in the Met in NY.
A sawed-down tree blocking a road: like a Tarot card for “barrier.”
I like walking in the Perle du Lac park by Lake Geneva.
The town is beautiful as well. I’ve been to Geneva nearly every year for the last forty years, as my wife's family lived here.
I always remember coming here with my parents for my wedding in 1967. Excited and proud. Pop had a drink of whiskey right before we landed, the whiskey was in a glass test-tube with a clip bracket like a pen, he had it in his inside coat pocket, one of his parishioners had given it to him, as a joke, I’d thought, but here he was drinking it, nervous I guess, my mother remonstrating, “Really, Ruck.” I thought nothing of it, at the time, I thought it was cute.
This may be the last visit for quite some time, as my wife’s parents have both passed on now. We’re here to tie up loose ends.
It’s raining linden blossoms on me in a cafe in the park-like campus of the University of Geneva across a traffic circle from the opera house and the Musee Rath. A lovely mild blue-sky day, people of all ages here at 10:30 AM, drinking tea, coffee, beer. I just ate a croissant that was Art Deco in its dough-folds.
My favorite Swiss artist is a dead guy called Ferdinand Hodler. Here's a virtual tour of his show at Musee Rath last year.
One night we went to see fireworks by the lake. These are moths swarming around a spotlight. The dottedness of the lines is due to the electical grid's 60 Hz flicker.
One day I spent a long time in a shoestore.
The net-withdrawal continues to intensify. I can’t get the computer at my step-mother-in-law’s house to do webmail. Must I settle for internet cafes? I’m totally jonesing for email. I feel like a man who’s lost his glasses. My laptop and email help me confirm to myself that I do have an identity.
But I’m finding that writing in this notebook soothes the same itch. In the background, I have in mind to type up these scribbles for my electronic journals, and for excerpting in my blog. But what if I didn’t ever type them up? Even so the act of writing would remain pleasurable. Writing is an end in itself, not only a means to an end. I am a graphomaniac.
This woman was doing mime-begging on the street, and then I saw her walking away. Another Tarot card: the mysterious gypsy. I see this as a starter scene for Frek 2.
Variation on the Pig Chef theme: a turtle hawking tortoise-shell eyeglass frames.
My back is unbelievably sore in the upper right quadrant and I’m doing yoga on the lawn as I write these notes, lying on a towel in red Palau T-shirt and black bathing trunks. Also reading and writing notes into Stross’s great Accelerando.
