5 - Freiburg

Stop into an Italian style ice cream bar...Beyonce, Jay-Z, P-Diddy...American music is alive and well in Europe, except in the symphonic concert halls.  

My internal life is consumed by references.  Observations as metaphors related to things I already know.  The world one observes is constantly being compared to the world one knows.  I feel incapable now of being able to simply observe, without extending the game of observation into my internal life of relationalities.  A Proustian character observing a Madeleine would think back to another memory reactualized and think of himself as an atemporal being, in contrast, I think of the present being hierarchically bounded by the past.  How to go forward?  Life is not an infinite tree of possibilities but a directed train out to one station, heading into the next.  

We pay for what we think are more authentic experiences.  The more authentic an experience, the more expensive.  Isn’t that why renting a video is cheaper than the strip show which is cheaper than the call girl which is cheaper than the wife?  But there is a measure of authenticity in which it should be somewhat inaccessible too.  This makes Amsterdam, the most potentially authentic of all cities, one of the most unreal. 

Writing a journal makes me focus more on the recent past than I am used to. 

Nothing alters one’s sense of temporality as much as intense physical activity – boxing, wrestling, sex.  Writing comes close afterwards. 

There is a lot of “fahrts” in Germany: einfahrt, abfahrt, ausfahrt.  It not a real language in the same way that Basel is not a real city.  My friends here insist that Basel is a bigger town, but Freiburg feels more lively.

Different length paragraphs in different length episodes. 

I am convinced now that Chinese and Italian restaurants are present no matter where one goes in the world. 

Imagine a place where we longer know if what we are buying are really the make we think they are.  Brand names would no longer have any value.  If everyone in Hong Kong is walking around with a Chanel bag, then would a “real” Chanel bag be worth the list price?  Fake ones look real.  The little girls seem to enjoy walking around perpetuating the illusion.  Fake designer bags can be harder to discern than plastic breasts.  Or since one pays more per period of observation, one pays more attention to plastic breasts.

Hotel Atlanta.  Everything is always a reference to something/somewhere else.  The present is always in counterpoint with a pre-history.  From each vantage point, there is a different localized ideal of the “other.”  What is it of “Atlanta” that Freiburgians want to invoke in naming a hotel? 

How much did McDonald’s pay to put their name on one of two remaining ancient city gates? 

China schnellrestaurant.  Eingang, ausgang.  Fast, quick and accessible food, and therefore the least authentic according the logic of today’s journal entry.