Listening to Antony (My Birthday)

Today’s my birthday. I’m 37. Antony’s brand new one is on its first loop of many through my ears. Shhh. I’m listening.

It’s been kinda one of those days. Even though it’s my birthday. Because it’s my birthday? I’m getting ready to go lie down on the couch. Maybe I’ll figure that one out.

If I had to speculate already though. I’d say. It might have something to do with the fact that two dogs have recently made me want to burst out into tears. The first one looked like Camilla. My parents’ last (and aborted) project. I mean she’s still alive. And I hope well somewhere. But the project got abandoned. The other one worked by ricochet. Just a dog. With its head on the ground. Making all that effort to look up at the world walking by him. You know. The way they have their heads down on the ground. And their eyeballs. Rolling up. All that effort. To see things going by.

Then there was the series. Haha. It’s funny. Because in French. Your sets on a muscle machine are a series. So I was in the middle of a series. Triceps. If I’m not mistaken. And there was an article in the paper. About a movie. Called “About War.” And apparently the last half of the movie. Could be resumed in two sentences. By Hélène Cixous. “When I lose my father, I also lose his child. The child I was for him, the one I am for me.” I had to make a big effort to be able to finish the series. Maybe I should have just let it break me down. But I made the effort to hold it together. At a moment when. One could understand. And I could, too. That things might fall apart a bit.

There’s also B. And T. T’s idea. To invite him over for traditional Saturday market roasted chicken lunch. Which was super nice. Then the three of us went to see a little show Tillmans has up here in Paris. B bought me the catalogue for the recent Hamburger Banhof show in Berlin. For my birthday. “Lighter.” It’s called. (Writing that up now, I read that as an injunction. “Make it lighter.”) It’s the one that is full of pictures of his pictures up on the wall at different exhibits. It’s beautiful. It has the smeared-up “photocopy (Barnaby)” on the front hardcover. And the back hardcover is more smeared-up photocopy. Of one of the pictures of an exhibition. I have some major thinking to do about constellations. Because I have to write about these things. For serious real. And. Because the B T W constellation. (By The Way???) After such a lovely Saturday. Entered into static on Sunday. When I had to work translating. Heavy buzzing. B’s still coming over for dinner with M tonight though. I’ll be in good company. And that’s already a lot. “I need another world…”