after a self-made dinner (a mixture of sea creatures on fried rice), a coffee (hand-ground from fresh beans and boiled with cardamon) and a cuba libre, sometimes around 03:45:12 i found myself amongst the open tabs of spiekerblog, slashdot, freedictionary and the list of my rss feeds that came alive and now run my life for me clicking “previous”, “previous” and “previous” endlessly on the nasa apod site, occasionaly at the verge of tears (of beauty) to the backdrop of some fascinating extra-terrestrial dubminimal techno (or dubtechno minimal).
i always thought (the astronomy noob i am) that the cheesy backdrop pictures in star trek tos were just that: cheesy backdrop pictures made up by dreamy faced junior artist designers on budget — although tastefully cheesy. i can only hope for their absolution as i hang my head in the shame of an ignorant heretic. their talent is remembered so much that i think nasa hired them after the show was shelved and all these pictures (including the moon landing) is their work..
sometimes indeed, life takes the liberty (or the impertinence) to imitate art. i am outraged art doesn’t sue.
have you—for example—ever seen a cloud from the inside when you were taking one of your 30+ cheap flights you take annually? they always seem like some lowly imitation of an imitation made by the cheapest cloud machine money can buy, probably made in china. what a let down really. perhaps sometimes nature can afford only the cheapest looking clouds with some guy’s hand, who is handling the wind machine, dangling into the picture now and then.
or the rain. when finally the production crew gets fed up waiting for the real thing and brings out the firemen with their hoses and two chimps, one with a piece of tin plate and the other operating a massive light bulb. instant rain, just add water. of course everyone can see that the rain is phony because it falls in stripes, if at all. but i have got soaked in rains like that and there was no production crew nearby, except the invisible one working for the mother (nature). so were nature’s special effects so sophisticated it actually looked fake? i am open to any answers.
well, the only way for me to see a sunrise is to stay up all night—and as the reassuring and enchanting black of the night is lifting to an everlighter shade of gray, to finally give quick and painless birth to the sun (today baptised Monday) so i must soon go and hide. it is better this way for everybody, believe me.
when my invisible, life-long very good friend Stig Baasvik came in from the bathroom and told me: “i demand you start one of those things where people keep writing nonsense, where you will imitate both life and art, and now and then throw in some of your own as you go and start tomorrow”, i instantly knew i could not say no. he is a friend after all. the only thing really needed during any haphazard reading of it is absolute and complete detachment.
and of course you must be this high and t h i s wide.
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2009-05-18