words, colours, feelings & other stuff

apart from that fantastic leonard cohen concert, life has not been tooooo bad either. *g*

i was rather spontaneously invited to read as special guest at the first café kafka open mic after the summer break - and of course i didn't decline. the atmosphere was great, i was quite relaxed, apart from the little bit of nerves that are part of it all. i read for about 25 minutes, poems from my chapbooks and others, and i was happy with my performance. i feel so at home there that it's almost like being in my own flat. and reading without the mic is so liberating and great that i am wondering why i never tried it before that technical breakdown a few months ago.


me at café kafka after my reading


october has been beautiful lately, blue skies and ahhhh the light! so, so amazing, and it's no wonder that this is my favourite time of the year. i was out taking pictures several times over the last couple of weeks, but i have had no time to edit anything.


busy bright bluish beetle



fragile: blossoms, leaf, snail @ donaupark


work is going well. my english class is great, they are so talkative, which makes speaking activities real fun. i can't believe that this is already week 4! i've had a few job offers, but i have to decline just about everything these days.

one other thing that is still fairly new is that i am now an ex-single, and have been for some weeks. the man in question is not a poet, he is not a native speaker of english, and he is not the dangerous heartbreaking kind that this girl has fallen for time and again. meet heinz:


h&m



mirror, mirror



three guys and barbapapa (on tv, not in the picture! *g*): jakob, simon, heinz


tomorrow, my poet friend john siddique arrives around lunchtime, and i am sooooo looking forward to seeing him, and to wour reading on thursday. now if only my temperature went down, and i could breathe through my nose, and my voice were back ... *s*

if you happen to be in vienna on thursday, 16 october, drop in at shakespeare & company bookshop, sterngasse 2, 1010 vienna, from 7.30 pm.


song of the day: los peces by lhasa .

it's monday ...

and i overslept. and was out the door within 15 minutes, because for once my hair did not stick up in all directions. boring admin stuff most of the morning. yawwwwwn.

met my friend birgit for much-needed girl talk and just-as-much-needed ice cream. :)
yesterday, much-needed and long-awaited girl talk with my friend sabine. exchanging dating stories is actually quite fun.

men are weird. unreliable, too. cowards. and did i mention, weird? yes. well. but someone told me yesterday that he's been stood up by girls a few times lately, so it must be the fashion.

this - the sun, the moon - was something i enjoyed in the company of a reliable and just-the-right-kind-of-weird man last wednesday (click to enlarge):












no poetry. but one acceptance from a zine i had long given up on.

and hey, the sun is shining, and my hair is newly hennaed.




song of the day: wildwood flower by emmylou harris & iris dement.

nice people and not so nice people

yesterday was my last day with the english II class - another eight weeks over in what seemed like the blink of an eye! my students gave me a mandarin tree, now called amy, and a couple of frogs (not real!) that i can try to throw at the wall if i feel like it: ferdinand and floggy. and chocolate and candles. :) we threw a farewell party on the last day, of course. ;)

i have recovered from being ill, and the weather is now back to summer, very hot, too hot to be working in stuffy rooms or spending more than three minutes on the u1 underground trains. thursday evening i honestly thought i'd pass out in there. ugh.

but what other way to get to my date? and that thursday evening was most definitely worth it. a perfect summer evening on a terrace, stars out, and late at night a bit of mist hovering just above the ground on neighbouring fields ... a candle, a couple of drinks, pistachios and chocolate, good music ... relaxed conversation, laughter ... and the rest, my dear readers, will not be disclosed (no, not even for the sake of science, valerio! *g*).


but ... tonight this girl here is not quite so thrilled and wondering where exactly it says "please piss me off!" or "show me how much of an asshole you can be!" - or is standing women up and generally behaving like complete bastards the latest fashion among men?? in this particular case, maybe i should have seen it coming. maybe so. but that does not make it right. by the time it became obvious that the man in question had better things to do than stick to his promise, it was too late for anything else, so i spent the evening at home, working, and chatting. sometimes i really am beginning to think i should give up on men altogether.

no new poetry. but i now have copies of alex stolis's and my chapbook signed by us both, so if you fancy a chapswap or would like to buy one of these (rare) copies, get in touch!

we've received our copies of the book about the armenian massacres in turkey, so i have started reading and taking notes, and we will decide soon which parts will be translated by ka and by me respectively.

i am re-reading cecilia woloch's late, and some of the poems choke me up no matter how often i read them. such great work. and i still have tons of (chap)books piled up that i hope to get around to reading soon: latest additions are ivy alvarez's mortal and sam byfield's from the middle kingdom.

off to bed now, i am an official photographer at steve gander's videoshoot for copulate and populate tomorrow (today, really)!

oh, and: me!




song of the day: salsa caliente by marisa monte & cesaria evora.

guys (yet again) & poems

okay, so there *are* still some nice guys out there, it seems. met one of them just now. and one of the "bad" guys has apologized in the meantime. so. i am inclined to believe in man-kind again. at least a little. ;)

yesterday i finished a poem i had begun in april, and i revised another one. they seem finished to me, although after all these months of not writing, i am a bit uncertain. but i am thrilled that i managed to write a few lines and not be utterly unhappy with them. here are a few lines from [metamorphosis]:

2 a.m. and the night is still digging
in its pockets for a slice of moon

clouds shift uneasily, as if for a moment
all the world unfolded their hands

someone learns that a hair on a blue pillow
can trigger a silence in the trees

[...]

have not been feeling too great the last few days, i suppose that's not such a big surprise after the cold and rainy spell we had. today i went for a walk though, at the new jewish section of central cemetery. i saw two deer - yes, in broad daylight, and not too far from the entrance!

still excited about leonard cohen - my brother martin will come to vienna for the occasion, too, yay! :)

song of the day: ever fallen in love by thea gilmore.

guys, again

do NOT mention them to me today. it's for your own safety. what have they done? well ...

a) cheating, and a call from an upset girlfriend
b) standing me up
c) not reacting to anything i told him, making me feel like an idiot

... can anybody blame me for my facebook status: "i may be the biggest female fool in the world, but at least i'm not a man"?

song of the day: you suck by the murmurs.

guys

date on saturday (central cemetery, ice cream, park). different date on sunday (spontaneous, champagne in front of a fountain on graben with piano music nearby, dinner, red wine, late night). no date on monday. confession of beingsomewhatinlovewithsomeone on tuesday. about to hide in a cave for the next, um, 42 years or so, starting now.

song of the day: a fool such as i by elvis presley.

this girl is pissed off with the bloody universe

just my luck eh. i meet a guy, have the most perfectest evening in aaaaaaaages, he gets this amazingly high score on the what-michi-wants-and-needs list, and then (are you ready for the anti-climax?) - it turns out to be bad timing.

thank goodness the weather is not mocking me - snow, snow, snow, dark skies.

now if you would excuse me, i have to go and feel sorry for myself.

song of the day: same as yesterday, only more so. almost lover by a fine frenzy.