Busy, busy, busy ... a day when to be up & out at eight feels late - the day already ten steps ahead. Swim, breakfast (yoghurt, oats, melon, strawberries, toast, tea) then down to the bike shop to drop E's bike. On to Schleiper's in town to buy paper. Looking around I begin to see what possibilities there are. Like wine, like tea, paper offers a whole new world to discover. I literally feel my way - rubbing sheets between finger and thumb - thinking what might work. Thinking, too, of the dangers of going too far towards 'beaux livres' and preciosity. I buy some A1 sheets of Japanese papers and interesting A4 100 gr. Either tonight before I leave or later next week I'll put together a follow up volume to wr:the. Working title: in(rypt .

Home via the Mediatheque and the supermarket (salmon for tonight). In the Mediatheque I nose round and nothing catches my attention. Until ... in the racks near the door a box set-

first draft edition
DIARIES
NOTES & SKETCHES
also known as Walden

JONAS MEKAS

(2 DVDs plus accompanying volume)

How could I resist? (That uncanny sense I've mentioned before of it lurking there ... waiting for me ... ).

I've just watched Reel One - and it hits right between the eyes. Bypassing everything you think a film should be. Deleuzean 'affect' to the max. The movement of camera and images, the micro poems as titles, the dislocations of soundtrack (Chopin, thundering subway, waves), abrupt shifts from colour to b&w, in-focus/out of focus, above all the quotidian ordinariness (a coffee for breakfast, brushing hair, picking a flower, a face in profile). A million doors open at once. Revelation.

I live - therefore I make films
I make films - therefore I live

Light. Movement.

I make home movies - therefore I live
I live - therefore I make home movies

They tell me I should be always searching
But I am only celebrating what I see

I am searching for nothing, I am happy
I am searching for nothing, I am happy
I am searching for nothing, I am happy

It will take me at least the next eight weeks to unfold the implications of this statement - and these films. Films which send seismic shocks out into writing and thinking and perceiving.

To find this set today feels like a gift.

And that phrase: 'home movies'. What, I wonder, if one were to start making 'home' poems? Or is that what it's been about all along?