April 24, 2003 : something like a sunset
I went to Brussels today to talk about my end of year show. To be honest, I was quite nervous, though I feel that I'm "on the right track." I have a lot on my plate right now, much of which seems to be idling sort of and some of which I'm trying to work through till completion on a daily basis.
I was nervous because the project seems so exciting at times and then a split-second later it seems rather plain and normal. I suppose my project as a whole is art, but to me it is so much more than dossier writing and plan making that I'm just wanting to get it over with! I suppose if I ever wanted to "make art" in my 27 years of life, this is the art that I have wanted to make. The concepts seem so sort of obvious to me that I am excited to share them. Whatever, 3 months from now it'll all be over and I'll revisit the concept of "art" for myself and move on.
At Brussels I talked with Steven, Herman, and Boris and they too seemed just as excited. Apparently I'll get to have part of my show at Argos in Brussels, and I'm liking the fact that I'm such a plain Midwestern American girl that I know the project will get made and exist that I'm not so worried about it anymore. It's not going to be high tech, if anything it will be more hillbilly engineered than anything. :) But that's what's so cool about it. It's making "art" out of very normal things!
The train-ride home was far from uneventful, as I managed to hop a very speedy train headed to Amsterdam, and after most of the standing-room compartment cleared, I was able to snag the pull-down seat and sit there listening to Belgian radio watching all of the people working in their by-the-train-tracks gardens. I can only hope that Rita's bio-boys and their pyramid-garden efforts produce something, as I suspected they were a little late in their efforts. Most of the plot-gardens at least were showing signs of garden as sprouts of green were popping up in rows.
At the station I decided on taking a different route and headed down Driekonignstraat past closing shops and the last few people wondering around. The ending-day was very still and it seemed as if rain would pour down at any given moment. I suppose it was humidity in conjunction with the stillness that made it like a sunset. It was obviously a day coming to an end, but more than that. People were sitting on their doorsteps and tending flower-boxes out their windows. It was warmer than one would guess, as the hooded sweatshirt I was wearing was proving to be more warmth than I had needed. It was just me and my old tape-player radio tuning more to Flemish voices than music--as it's suddenly become apparent to me that I understand more Dutch than I realize.
At home, I too opened up the windows and let the non-windy-air enter our house through the front windows and leave through the back.
When Eva came home I was talking with Bobbie about her trip to Belgium. She seems pretty worried about the 11 hour flight to Paris and her hour-flight to Amsterdam (more the first than the latter) I had forgotten that she was ever nervous about flying, and then I recalled our first flight together to New York, and how at every bump in the sky her hands gripped the arm rests.
I'm excited about her coming here. She's been meaning to come to here for quite some time, as I had prodded her into getting her passport several years ago, back when it seemed I was on a track to coming to Europe every 3 or 4 months--little did I know that Eva would end up coming to the states after the second leg of my every-3 or 4-months trip-to-Europe outing.
I'm simply excited to have her around, to show her my daily Belgian routine and to let her sneak a peak into the not-so-foreign-foreign country of Belgium. It's highly underestimated, and I love showing people Antwerp, as each and every time I take people around it reminds me just how special it is. I forget that I'm living sort of a novel life and that I have a somewhat exotic girlfriend. It's good to be reminded.
Eva and I ordered Chinese food from China Meal, the cheapest-deal-in-Belgium, only we didn't order the Family Pack as we've decided it's a better deal if we pay the same price and get more specialized meals that we eat most of and don't waste. We also rented a DVD to watch while we were eating. We chose Bend It Like Beckham, and though the acting wasn't the best, the movie was genuinely entertaining. Who wouldn't love a movie with a lot of humorous gay undertones and a lot of hilarious Indian-culture tidbits.
As Eva's been complaining that our bedtime of 1 in the morning is entirely too late, we headed to bed a little before midnight and listened to the BBC world service on our crank radio. We listened until it started repeating the news we had already heard, and having become up-to-speed on all of the worlds events, we turned to our most comfortable lumpy mattress sleeping positions, back to back, (oh what a mattress would do!) and went to sleep.
IN THE NEWS:
Iceland opened a filling station for hydrogen-powered vehicles today — one of very few in the world and the next step toward its dream of giving up fossil fuels completely. The first car in line was a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van, a prototype provided under a European Union backed program to use Iceland as a test for hydrogen power.
