FROM THE "ROAD NOTES OF MAVEN": THE LODESTONE, originally uploaded by mavenimagery® Officially Away....
FROM THE "ROAD NOTES OF MAVEN": THE LODESTONE
No bullshit, but I never leave the house (be it a trip to the grocery store or to the pharmacy or to Hawaii, Maui; to the nearest park, a tomato field; a drive-in to Mac Donald’s) to wherever and whenever, without a mix for anything; everything…You wait for a friend to return from a two-weeks trip to Canary Island and you ask, “Dude, how was it?”. Excited to hear something exciting, but all you get is “OK. It was aright”. Okay? You just flew five thousand miles and spent two weeks in Canary Island and you have nothing to say but, “It was Ookay ”. OK, nothing’s happened to you? No mishaps? Adventure? Not even losing a bag or a wallet? Not meeting anyone worth mentioning? Where did you stay, in one of US Military Bases overseas? I don’t know how is that possible but I’m a magnet; trouble magnet; luck magnet. Every kind of human magnet: a heart-broken woman strolling on the beach in Mediterranean will tell me her life story; a Monk from Tibet will connect with me and we’d be talking spiritualism; a wanna-be-priest-homeless-hippie from Santa Monica will meet me in Rome and will tell me. “What you just said is fascinating—you’re incredibly angry at people, aren’t you?” This fake-ass-homeless devotee will hand me the bible and point me to some stupid verses such as, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Bible, 2 Timothy blaah blaah.” And “By evil report and good report. Bible, 2 Corinthians, this should be followed, like, with twenty blaahs”. He’ll say, “Keep the Bible,” I’ll say, “Thanks. I have my own”. He’ll say, “I was supposed to meet this friend but he didn’t show up…he owes me some money so I have no money to go back home. I don’t suppose you a few bucks? 50 bucks would help a lot. If you give me your address I’ll mail it back to you. Honestly…”
Later, I’ll see the same fake-ass in Milan handing a bible to an old man…
In Sweden, I’ll drive my rental Toyota Yaris in the middle of the night through the frozen, icy streets with most of the signs half covered with snow, and I’ll stop a Swedish girl, with her friends jammed in an old black Saab, who will show me directions to place which I’d been circling for an hour or so, and the next morning I’ll find an envelope on my windshield with my picture in it, taken probably four years ago in Monaco. Handwritten, on the back of the picture, Is this you? Please call me if this is you.
A hobbyist photographer from Germany with a four thousand Euro Canon 1D Mark III camera will bond with me in Yosemite and, stubbornly, will say that no Av or Tv modes are necessary since he’s shooting in RAW. I’ll run into this man in Frankfurt one year later, still shooting Raw in P mode.
Due to an Airline fuck up, Stephen King will give me some advice on writing in Bangor International Airport, Maine. He’ll says, “Write in way that Forest Gump would understand, and I would appreciate it”. It will take me couple of years to realize what he meant. I will not write for Forest Gump and Stephen King will not appreciate it.
Luck (?): I will cancel my flight from Finland to New York on 7/11 and where I will stay is just a few blocks away from 52nd Street (A.K.A Ground Zero) at W. 53rd Street.
Coincidence? I’ll fall in love in Paris at the age of nineteen. Not long after, heart-broken, I’ll look down from the top of Eiffel Tower at the age of nineteen and five months old, while eavesdropping a couple from Texas and the seventy-eight years old man will say, “Honey, there’s some great places in the world beside the States, after all” and the wife will say, “It’s beautiful, hon” . The old man will say, “Aren’t you glad now that I talked you into it?”. Then the old Texan will only gaze far, will admire the best architecture in the world and above him were hundreds radio VLBI-based positions of quasars with numerous global collaborators antennas, (I will learn later: including an antenna in Arlington, Virginia. The object of the transmissions was to measure the difference in longitude between Paris and Washington, D.C which he could only operate from The United States Naval Observatory for decades and on until his retirement) . He’ll suddenly collapse on the floor, putting his right hand on his chest and will suffers an (SCD) sudden cardiac death. The wife will say, “I told you to stay at level two, you stubborn fool…stay with me”. Old and weak, veiny hands will apply pressure to the old man’s chest to no avail. The wife will say, “Dammed, Jack! Jus had to insist on being an antenna…jus had to…had to…breathe, hon, please!”. The old man will never breathe again.
From a double-decker bus in England on Bond Street, I’ll see a high-school friend whom I hadn’t seen in a decade and I will jump off D-Decker, run after him and shout, “No! Not you!”, and he will shout back the same words and we will be both rolling on the sidewalk, breaking into a fit of laughter so intense our stomachs hurt, (just for the record, no one ever could then or now can make me laugh the same way he did; I did inspire and fire up the sense of humor, though, every time we rolling on some sidewalk) and before we could cool down under the feet of the passersby who are throwing Royal Mints of one and two pence-changes , thinking we’re street performers, and some seconds will pass and we’ll only be accompanied by a class-mate of my friend whom also happens to be my friend whom also we both haven’t seen since the graduation and his moving to Germany to further his education as a Mechanic Engineer for Mercedes Benz. (Now, you know why some of Mercedes models are looking all funny)
Witnessing death in the Middle-East.
Facing death in the Middle-East: four Middle-East men will fire their rifles at me and they’ll miss.
There will be a nail on the road, any road away from an industrial area, where it shouldn’t be and it will hook up with my tire.
Disappointment. Impatience. Gridlock. Accident.
I carry a mix for any human condition; of everything. Anything really good or bad happens to me, does not happen to everyone. The things that happen to me don’t happen to everyone. I hope not. You have to be in my life, there with me, to witness. Otherwise, it will sound nothing but embellished, egotistically told a full of crap incidents.
Traffic. This is where I encounter Officer ‘Blimp-Head’ Levine. This neurotic cop who cannot cope with his own dissatisfied social, sexual and anxiety-ridden out-of-uniform life will punish himself first. Ironically, when in uniform and in false sense of reality and high minded will feel it’s up to him to improve everything with strong personal convictions and an intense sense of right and wrong, personal and moral value , (despite his involvement in illegal and fraudulent activities), just as he may once or continuously punished and degraded himself, he now, given the power, will turn his own aggression against others by scapegoating and persecuting with the same hatred and desire for revenge—revenge of what?
The greatest consensus in modern society is our traffic system. The way a flood of strangers can interact, sharing lanes, almost all of them traveling without incident. It takes only one disobedient driver and one bad uniform to create anarchy. But, a corrupt, egocentric-head in a uniform, and the dark side of power, the ability to destroy and abuse what power has created is not only inherited in our legal system or Law enforcement Agencies. It’s a global disease; an epidemic since the creation of the first Rotten-Cheese-Head-Humankind. As we’ll see in the following true incident, greed and power can go to any infinite distance and time to get what they deem it’s righteous! The path and tactics they employ are painfully comical…just hilarious.
The weather was wet-cold. The temperatures in Frankfurt range from -1.85 to 25 (Celsius). Outside, I recognized Dieter Betheke’s Porsche Boxster 911, which is a mid-engine roadster-toaster-like-canary-yellow-color and Bernhard Vogl ‘s VW GTI Golf.
In my hand I hold the key to slightly different world: a 2002, silver Audi TT Coupe, 1.8L 4-cyl. Engine, 225hp Quattro, Turbo 6 speed Manual transmission (which can be a no, no, and a hellish nightmare for most Americans who wouldn’t even be able to start the engine...No kidding!)
Christian and I park our cars in front of Cyber the Internet Zone.
Chris? I say. “I need my bottled water,”
“Still on the bottle?” wise-cracks Christian. “You’re not in Kenya, man. Tap water is fine here. This is Germany.”
“You know what I mean Chris. We’ve been through this Purified Water vs. Spring Water, shit before,”
“Yes, we have,” admitted Chris.
Rollback to that discussion. “Man,” said Christian when I asked for Evian bottled water. “I thought. I was the one who is OCD—“
“You were not,” I say. “You were just a nerd who hand-sanitizes his hands after touching the keyboard. This is a totally different issue.”
“So, Mr Mavenstein” says Chris in an ironic tone. “Think Purified Water better than, uh, Spring Water?”
“Spring-water is like smuggling bolognas in the backseat of a Mexican truck driver with a fake FDA/Imported stamp, then, process them in an unhygienic environment and sell it to you at an astronomical price, and only later to find out that you have been infected with some kind of bacteria and it’s already eating your brains out, turning you into Rain Man.
While there are some distinct differences between purified and spring water, It’s proved—
“By who?” Chris cut me off, adjusting his white baseball-cap.
Ignoring Chris, I went on. “…to find the overall benefits of bottled water in general make this option a smart one. The extra processing that most bottled waters are subjected to can help remove impurities that slip through the public water supply's treatment and testing programs. Can I have my Evian now, please?
“Arschloch” murmurs Chris.
“Thank you for reminding me, Chris,” I say nonchalantly. “You’re the best. So, how long time do we have to go get my Evian and get back my asshole here in time?”
Once in Cyber Internet Zone, we spot Dieter Bethke and Bernhard Vogl at the table, hunched over, writing on their notebooks, a Lowenbrau beer and an Absolute Vodka placed respectively in front of them. They wave at us over.
..TO BE CONTINUED!
No bullshit, but I never leave the house (be it a trip to the grocery store or to the pharmacy or to Hawaii, Maui; to the nearest park, a tomato field; a drive-in to Mac Donald’s) to wherever and whenever, without a mix for anything; everything…You wait for a friend to return from a two-weeks trip to Canary Island and you ask, “Dude, how was it?”. Excited to hear something exciting, but all you get is “OK. It was aright”. Okay? You just flew five thousand miles and spent two weeks in Canary Island and you have nothing to say but, “It was Ookay ”. OK, nothing’s happened to you? No mishaps? Adventure? Not even losing a bag or a wallet? Not meeting anyone worth mentioning? Where did you stay, in one of US Military Bases overseas? I don’t know how is that possible but I’m a magnet; trouble magnet; luck magnet. Every kind of human magnet: a heart-broken woman strolling on the beach in Mediterranean will tell me her life story; a Monk from Tibet will connect with me and we’d be talking spiritualism; a wanna-be-priest-homeless-hippie from Santa Monica will meet me in Rome and will tell me. “What you just said is fascinating—you’re incredibly angry at people, aren’t you?” This fake-ass-homeless devotee will hand me the bible and point me to some stupid verses such as, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Bible, 2 Timothy blaah blaah.” And “By evil report and good report. Bible, 2 Corinthians, this should be followed, like, with twenty blaahs”. He’ll say, “Keep the Bible,” I’ll say, “Thanks. I have my own”. He’ll say, “I was supposed to meet this friend but he didn’t show up…he owes me some money so I have no money to go back home. I don’t suppose you a few bucks? 50 bucks would help a lot. If you give me your address I’ll mail it back to you. Honestly…”
Later, I’ll see the same fake-ass in Milan handing a bible to an old man…
In Sweden, I’ll drive my rental Toyota Yaris in the middle of the night through the frozen, icy streets with most of the signs half covered with snow, and I’ll stop a Swedish girl, with her friends jammed in an old black Saab, who will show me directions to place which I’d been circling for an hour or so, and the next morning I’ll find an envelope on my windshield with my picture in it, taken probably four years ago in Monaco. Handwritten, on the back of the picture, Is this you? Please call me if this is you.
A hobbyist photographer from Germany with a four thousand Euro Canon 1D Mark III camera will bond with me in Yosemite and, stubbornly, will say that no Av or Tv modes are necessary since he’s shooting in RAW. I’ll run into this man in Frankfurt one year later, still shooting Raw in P mode.
Due to an Airline fuck up, Stephen King will give me some advice on writing in Bangor International Airport, Maine. He’ll says, “Write in way that Forest Gump would understand, and I would appreciate it”. It will take me couple of years to realize what he meant. I will not write for Forest Gump and Stephen King will not appreciate it.
Luck (?): I will cancel my flight from Finland to New York on 7/11 and where I will stay is just a few blocks away from 52nd Street (A.K.A Ground Zero) at W. 53rd Street.
Coincidence? I’ll fall in love in Paris at the age of nineteen. Not long after, heart-broken, I’ll look down from the top of Eiffel Tower at the age of nineteen and five months old, while eavesdropping a couple from Texas and the seventy-eight years old man will say, “Honey, there’s some great places in the world beside the States, after all” and the wife will say, “It’s beautiful, hon” . The old man will say, “Aren’t you glad now that I talked you into it?”. Then the old Texan will only gaze far, will admire the best architecture in the world and above him were hundreds radio VLBI-based positions of quasars with numerous global collaborators antennas, (I will learn later: including an antenna in Arlington, Virginia. The object of the transmissions was to measure the difference in longitude between Paris and Washington, D.C which he could only operate from The United States Naval Observatory for decades and on until his retirement) . He’ll suddenly collapse on the floor, putting his right hand on his chest and will suffers an (SCD) sudden cardiac death. The wife will say, “I told you to stay at level two, you stubborn fool…stay with me”. Old and weak, veiny hands will apply pressure to the old man’s chest to no avail. The wife will say, “Dammed, Jack! Jus had to insist on being an antenna…jus had to…had to…breathe, hon, please!”. The old man will never breathe again.
From a double-decker bus in England on Bond Street, I’ll see a high-school friend whom I hadn’t seen in a decade and I will jump off D-Decker, run after him and shout, “No! Not you!”, and he will shout back the same words and we will be both rolling on the sidewalk, breaking into a fit of laughter so intense our stomachs hurt, (just for the record, no one ever could then or now can make me laugh the same way he did; I did inspire and fire up the sense of humor, though, every time we rolling on some sidewalk) and before we could cool down under the feet of the passersby who are throwing Royal Mints of one and two pence-changes , thinking we’re street performers, and some seconds will pass and we’ll only be accompanied by a class-mate of my friend whom also happens to be my friend whom also we both haven’t seen since the graduation and his moving to Germany to further his education as a Mechanic Engineer for Mercedes Benz. (Now, you know why some of Mercedes models are looking all funny)
Witnessing death in the Middle-East.
Facing death in the Middle-East: four Middle-East men will fire their rifles at me and they’ll miss.
There will be a nail on the road, any road away from an industrial area, where it shouldn’t be and it will hook up with my tire.
Disappointment. Impatience. Gridlock. Accident.
I carry a mix for any human condition; of everything. Anything really good or bad happens to me, does not happen to everyone. The things that happen to me don’t happen to everyone. I hope not. You have to be in my life, there with me, to witness. Otherwise, it will sound nothing but embellished, egotistically told a full of crap incidents.
Traffic. This is where I encounter Officer ‘Blimp-Head’ Levine. This neurotic cop who cannot cope with his own dissatisfied social, sexual and anxiety-ridden out-of-uniform life will punish himself first. Ironically, when in uniform and in false sense of reality and high minded will feel it’s up to him to improve everything with strong personal convictions and an intense sense of right and wrong, personal and moral value , (despite his involvement in illegal and fraudulent activities), just as he may once or continuously punished and degraded himself, he now, given the power, will turn his own aggression against others by scapegoating and persecuting with the same hatred and desire for revenge—revenge of what?
The greatest consensus in modern society is our traffic system. The way a flood of strangers can interact, sharing lanes, almost all of them traveling without incident. It takes only one disobedient driver and one bad uniform to create anarchy. But, a corrupt, egocentric-head in a uniform, and the dark side of power, the ability to destroy and abuse what power has created is not only inherited in our legal system or Law enforcement Agencies. It’s a global disease; an epidemic since the creation of the first Rotten-Cheese-Head-Humankind. As we’ll see in the following true incident, greed and power can go to any infinite distance and time to get what they deem it’s righteous! The path and tactics they employ are painfully comical…just hilarious.
The weather was wet-cold. The temperatures in Frankfurt range from -1.85 to 25 (Celsius). Outside, I recognized Dieter Betheke’s Porsche Boxster 911, which is a mid-engine roadster-toaster-like-canary-yellow-color and Bernhard Vogl ‘s VW GTI Golf.
In my hand I hold the key to slightly different world: a 2002, silver Audi TT Coupe, 1.8L 4-cyl. Engine, 225hp Quattro, Turbo 6 speed Manual transmission (which can be a no, no, and a hellish nightmare for most Americans who wouldn’t even be able to start the engine...No kidding!)
Christian and I park our cars in front of Cyber the Internet Zone.
Chris? I say. “I need my bottled water,”
“Still on the bottle?” wise-cracks Christian. “You’re not in Kenya, man. Tap water is fine here. This is Germany.”
“You know what I mean Chris. We’ve been through this Purified Water vs. Spring Water, shit before,”
“Yes, we have,” admitted Chris.
Rollback to that discussion. “Man,” said Christian when I asked for Evian bottled water. “I thought. I was the one who is OCD—“
“You were not,” I say. “You were just a nerd who hand-sanitizes his hands after touching the keyboard. This is a totally different issue.”
“So, Mr Mavenstein” says Chris in an ironic tone. “Think Purified Water better than, uh, Spring Water?”
“Spring-water is like smuggling bolognas in the backseat of a Mexican truck driver with a fake FDA/Imported stamp, then, process them in an unhygienic environment and sell it to you at an astronomical price, and only later to find out that you have been infected with some kind of bacteria and it’s already eating your brains out, turning you into Rain Man.
While there are some distinct differences between purified and spring water, It’s proved—
“By who?” Chris cut me off, adjusting his white baseball-cap.
Ignoring Chris, I went on. “…to find the overall benefits of bottled water in general make this option a smart one. The extra processing that most bottled waters are subjected to can help remove impurities that slip through the public water supply's treatment and testing programs. Can I have my Evian now, please?
“Arschloch” murmurs Chris.
“Thank you for reminding me, Chris,” I say nonchalantly. “You’re the best. So, how long time do we have to go get my Evian and get back my asshole here in time?”
Once in Cyber Internet Zone, we spot Dieter Bethke and Bernhard Vogl at the table, hunched over, writing on their notebooks, a Lowenbrau beer and an Absolute Vodka placed respectively in front of them. They wave at us over.
..TO BE CONTINUED!
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