Berlin, January 11, 1996

My desk is again covered by a mountain of papers and especially books. I really feel like Sisyphos all the time while at the moment suffering of the gas that my stomach is producing as if it wants to blow up ( it smells like the cowshit in the streets of south Germany around me which is not at all a romantic memory). I tried to help out with Schalimar but it is probably the fried herring that causes the discomfort and not the amount of heavy text that I am trying to digest. Anyway Sisyphos is again out of control, - I just cleaned and dug down this mountain of work and now my desk looks the same. Just to name a couple of things representing my mental chaos, my mental homelessness I have to mention the influencing burden of a book on html and cgi programming (hate it but love the poetic sound of the definitions) the college dictionary, etymological dictionary, new bills, the Glassbeadgame, my filofax, info about the virtual college, a letter from the MET NY, and everything has to be taken care of as soon as possible, plus I have to urgently write this lecture for the CAA meeting and my calendar is filled with appointments and unfortunately further deadlines. Hate it. And of course I would like to dive into those books and not produce at the moment. The whole frustration resulted in a bottle of whine and half a bar of chocolate, while from time to time I get interrupted by this smelly sound seeming to come from the bottom of my chair and reading despite the deadlines.

A couple of lets call it accidents brought me to a profound and absolutely valid amount of text that I am reading and working on right now and make me excited. He found me an essay by Michael Heim from the book "The metaphysics of virtual reality" "The computer as a component" which inspired me. I love those research trips were you can find all those nice things that are like gems, or pearls. Actually maybe I am the oyster( the smell fits :-) and I am creating out of these things. They disturb me in a positive sense, the throw me out of my routine life and then this anxiety and disturbance makes me creative, I integrate them built them in and might grow a pearl... lay an egg.... a new arty child...whatever want to read again now.