bye

I cried. As we flew over Manhattan. West side, and then across. Chrysler building, my house. Boxes of buildings. Lit avenues. Million lights blinking for a million people. Mine? I switched it off when I left.
I cried for all the pain and tough times you put me through. Of how you sucked me dry and spat me out. Of how I kept my sanity.

You stranger, you have...
You have silently moved in and made it crowded.

New York, I fucking love you!

an army of one

Morning. Get in. 20th floor, the elevator. Sit down, raise your flag, take a floor. Fight. Four hours. Get out. Elevator. Mad dash. 1 Ave UN building. Escalator down. Take a seat. Push a button. Vote. Resolutions. Follow the instructions. Get it right. Endless statements. Four hours. Come up for air. Battle sleep. Battle restlessness.

Call boss. Worry. Inhale. Exhale. Get instructions.
Get out. Escalator up. 1 Ave, 2 Ave, 3 Ave. Office building, 26th floor. Sit down. Procrastinate. Write a report. Write another. Yet another. 10 pm. Stumble out. In the dark. Home. Elevator, 13th floor. A mess. Sit down, eat shit, watch TV. Try and read. Fail.

Battle insomnia, battle heartache, battle loneliness. Battle the demons. Cross off days.

Rinse and repeat.

I am an army of one.

sc

This is to destify that cockroaches roam the holiest of holy places. I saw one wondering about the Security Council Chambers today. It almost stepped on me. Ugh!

mens shoes

...crossing 3rd Ave with my hips swinging - I was thinking that I sooo love being a woman after all...
and then about
two minutes later I was drooling over mens shoes at Nino's Shoes window display...

go figure

tag sale

Four people sitting around the table. Talking shit. Eating quiche.
I'm positive I'm green in the face with three hours of sleep and a hangover.
It' raining. It's cold and I want to go home. And sleep.

There's a jar of kosher dill pickles on the kitchen counter and I'm thinking to myself, when was it that
I learned that the ends of the pickle are not really eadible.

"No, of course I don't mind coming back here next week, and no, there's no need to pass the...."

Oh, and then... I remember being a child and that blessed feeling of being allowed to make waffles. Always eating half of the mix and getting yelled at. Squeezing the machine shut so tight most of the waffle ended up pressed out of the sides. I don't honestly think I'll ever be so excited about anything in my life...

jeanne

Am I the only one who loves this weateher? Tropical storm Jeanne, formerly known as hurricane Jeanne is pouring cats and dogs on Gotham. It's nothing you've seen before.

The water is up to one's ankles and my pants are wet to my knees. Outside my window there's nothing but a big fluffy cloud.

I love it.

I love the tropic nature of this wetness that steams the windows and if I were wearing glasses, my glasses too.

I love it to the degree of wanting to turn my pants up, throwing my shoes into the bin and running to my meetings barefeet.

Half an hour spent mending my 3 dollar umbrella. The deal is that I refuse to buy another umbrella in this town of crappy umbrellas. They all break the first time around anyway.

I love it. I love all of it.

New York, there are times that I totally love you!

all the president's men

It's been a crazybusy week of crisp weather and now - June weather. Blue skies that seem to go on and on and on. I had the window open and I was cold. Good kind of cold. The kind of cold that kept me sharp and let me ponder.

Everything seems to be wrapped in Sade's music - that for the most part brings a lump to my throat. I clean my house and I play host. I am being well entertained.

With all the president's men I spent three hours at a deserted hangar at JFK. Bomb squad, panic squad. Secret Service. Every morning I watch the snipers take their positions on top of the UN building.

I see tents being erected for fashion week in Bryant Park, and I see them torn down the next day. Stepping on a sharp object that goes through the sole of my shoe I cut myself. That fascinates me. I had the tetanus done a year ago - we're good.

The town feels sad at times. I feel busy. And why is it that for months on end whenever I look at the watch it shows identical digits?
1:11, 4:44; 17:17. That scares me.

A lot of things need to change. There's a fork in the road. For the most part I walk blindfolded.
The books I read tell me that there's an end of the world in each and every one of us. And Mary Magdalene wasn't really a whore.
Perceptions - of your mind and mine.

ocean city

At present I’m agonizing over an online booking system that is not issuing tickets - for the 10th consecutive hour. A customer service girl from India with an unbearable accent is telling me all sorts of things. I couldn’t help but yell at her. So much about out-shipping the jobs.

I often think that if I didn’t dye my hair it would most probably be gray by now.

I try to grab hold of the positive things in the past three weeks and my weekends. That would last and that would take me further and closer to.... something.... or other.

I missed you on the beach with the sand beneath my toes. As the cool breeze tousled my hair I lay on the body board fighting off the mosquitoes and dampness and the longing. For home and everything that comes with it.

In the night, on the beach with the Atlantic singing and the dolphins playing the full Moon swam slowly across the sky.

The day started with the most significant sunrise and a headache – also of a significant kind. Surrounded by a deadly mix of blue skies and white sand and the fishermen and the non-existent coverage area of all the US cellphone networks I fried my body, smelling the ozone.

We all dream of home. Of homecomings, of people that matter. We sit in a circle and unite in the quest for trying to find flavours and scents that would bring back the familiar. That would once and for all be like the real thing.

We are the severed limbs of the Estonian psychic – oh so dramatic...

I believe in the sand beneath my toes,
The beach gives a feeling,
An earthy feeling,
I believe in the faith that grows,
And the four right chords can make me cry,
When I'm with you I feel like I could die.
And that would be all right,
All right
Third Eye Blind

incredible lightness of being

Incredible lightness of being - with you. Every day. My words are red. So intense that there's color.

You are beautiful like a song...

urban tranquility

I was sitting in the park last night enjoying the breeze of the North-American summer, eating peanut butter and raisins.

Urban tranquillity.

And then all of a sudden there were big black rats running all over the place.

That, I'm sure, is New York at it's best. Plus the stinking piles of trash. And dog turds on the curb.

Why do we crucify ourselves everyday?
I crucify myself,
I crucify myself every day.
tori amos

adios ayer

I consume and I eat. I entertain my guests and have a good time. I go drinking and deli hopping in East Village, I get burned at the beach. I go to work. For the first time in my life I am forced to sleep in an air conditioned room. I watch silly movies - two nights in a row now. I walk the streets and smell New York. Garbage, parks and concrete.

I do all that. But... I still don't know how to really live without you.

I know we all agree that.... love is a beautiful thing.

life in mono

You are tangled in the light shaded green from the trees outside, that seeps in the living room windows. You yourself, curled up into a ball are the light of the yellowish-warm-kind.

It's 6 am.

We are leaving...

new york minute

Things change in a New York minute. I could not see the Chrysler building but I could see my breath walking to work this morning.

I like it when Fridays equal "happy"!

We've been living in a tropical storm. The kind that makes you want to go running 11:30 at night, 60 blocks up and down 1st Ave.

quote of the day

"Hey man, got flames?"

A hobo trying to lit a cigarette.

rain over manhattan

It rained hard over Manhattan last night. It was dark and it smelt of spring and fertile earth... and concrete. I was walking home, beetroot leaves dangling out of the shopping bag. What is the secret of a delicious beetroot salad? I thought I'd get the beets first and figure the salad out later. I also got a jar of German sauerkraut.

The volume of plastic bags one is assigned to at any store here is kind of overwhelming. I always ask them to downsize. Give me smaller, give me fewer. It's the guilt thing, I know I'm not supposed to consume that much. I do not NEED so many.

Did you know that Time Square turned 100 last week? Did you know that over 2 million teenagers in the US get plastic surgery every year to resemble their favourite movie or pop star? Did you know that our office building swings in the wind? It creaks a lot and aloud as it does so. It is totally possible to get seasick in the toilets.

And yeah, Timeline is out on dvd today!!! Excitement!

i'll talk to you later

I've not seen or spoken to anyone for a week. Except for work. And that's OK. I've got my daily phone calls with you and that's all that I need.

I spent $6 on tips to stop the toilet from flushing. Again.
I spend $20x2 daily at a grocery store picking out delights that would not make me sick.

It's all about what my parents said and what my sister said and what you said and what everybody else said that I'm trying to make life altering decisions and somehow accommodate the most amazing week spent at home. There's a lot of love in my life.

Imagine a world where everything makes sense..., where pieces fit and come together. Where potholes in the road and shiny Selver isles make you cry.

I've stopped counting days - for a while anyway. There's just too many to get by. I reply to emails welcoming me back saying: Let's keep in touch - I'll contact you when I'm ready. To face this city. When I'm ready.

Until then... I'll talk to you later...

Et hingata välja
tuleb hingata sisse
ja vastupidi
d.kareva

2 become 1

I knew the manufactures had me after this sweet ad on the teevee.

"Become one with your vacuum [cleaner]!"

not resourceful enough

I've had a good life. Probably way better than I have deserved.

I look back at everything I've done. Every single little thing I'd taken for granted and.... I just dont know why I had to go and give it all up so spontaneously.

Post-conflict reconciliation in Africa does not matter in the light of what I've left behind.

I miss my life. I miss my living arrangements, I miss my car and my home. And I'm sure my car misses me too. Parked somewhere random, waiting to be sold.
I miss my things being packed up in a container somewhere for a third consecutive month.
I miss my working week, I miss my morning commute. I miss my office. I even miss my boss.

I miss my firiday nights and my weekends. I miss my big sister. I miss our super trooper sound system. I miss eating out in the Old Town. I miss blackbread and Borges green pitted olives, I miss my home Selver and my gas station.

I miss my bars and my friends and my hang-outs. I miss my mom and I miss my dad.

And most of all - I miss you.

odd to think

"Odd to think that the piece of you that I know the best is already dead. The cells on the surface of your skin are thin and flat without blood vessels or nerve endings. Dead cells, thickest on the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet. Your sepulchral body, offered to me in the past tense, protects your soft centre from the intrusions of the outside world. I am one such intrusion, stroking you with necrophiliac obsession, loving the shell laid out before me. The dead you is constantly being rubbed off by the dead me..."
(j.winterson)

How beautifully grotesque! Words arranged in a fashion that render me defenseless.

42 and counting

wheat grass juice

I just drank something that is called the wheat grass juice and... am about to be sick.

"What is a power shot of wheat grass juice", you might ask?
"It's the freshly-squeezed juice from young wheat which provides the same benefit as eating a two-pound salad", I might answer.
"Plus, it helps to increase the body's stamina, aids digestion, reduces cravings for addictive substances, improves fertility, makes bowel movements regular and eases every physical and mental ailment you may have."

How cool, but why does it make me heave???? But hey, since I'm all for increased stamina and regular bowel movements, I guess I'll go in for another shot tomorrow.

It just seems to get colder and colder in this damn country and this damn city. I walked a hundred blocks down to Christopher street and back on Sunday - on all the east side avenues and Broadway. It made me contemplate buying a face mask, the one that makes you look like a moron.

Right this moment..., today this town is not doing it for me.

52 and counting

aren't you glad?

Another day, another sunset to die for.
And as I am yet to pour my first drink I can honestly say that I've been effective and efficient today.

Oh...there's something that cracks me up.
Have you seen the toilet tissue and holders in public toilets that say:
"Katrin - The less is more..."
Pardon, but.... less of what is more?... Slogans that make absolutely no sense.

We've got ones here at work that say......."Aren't you glad you use Dial?"
What??? Aren't I glad I'm using Dial? Wait. What. What the what?!
...jay-sus...

glowing red

For seven years I've been wishing my life away. For seven years I have been living for a moment in future.
Hours and days and months do not matter for as long as I get through them to...
do whatever it is that I'm so looking forward to do...

I mark my calendar and nothing else matters. It's hard and above all - wasteful.
I'm doing it again.

I moved into my apartment over the weekend.
For two days I cleaned and scrubbed.
I found a dead cockroach on my bedroom floor.
Seriously, an awkward situation - I'm scared to death of cockroaches.

I also made mental note of the local licquer store being closed on Sundays - you know...it's good to know.

Currently...
I'm enjoying a glass of wine and a million dollar sunset over the highrises...
There are stars in my sky
And the planes that come in like UFO's
The Empire State is glowing red tonight...

desolate places

For the time being taking the regular scheduling to NYC, USA

Still jetlagged I sit in my office, eat my lunch and stare out the window. I tower over lower Manhattan. I can see into your bedroom... Honestly, I can.
I dont appreciate this city. I dont appreciate the daily commute that takes me right past the Empire State Building - twice.

This town breaks my heart in every possible way ten times over. And over and over. Do you know that every night I go to bed with your photo and every morning I tell it that I love you? I hardly ever tell you of the pain. I just spent the two most amazing weeks with you.
Instead I feel hungry all the time...

And then there's the snow, and the cold and my apartment that looks over many other things but other than that is not really that nice...

So is this really it? What am I doing it for? Can I please go home now.