Porthole Day One – Six, 2013, Inkjet Print, 32,5 x 45 cm, 2013
These prints were shown as part of an installation for Story-Boards at M29

The writing for Portholes is inspired by the daily diary Maja Sweeny wrote partially in the character of the janitor during her eight week performance on an imaginary cruise liner we had activated in Smack Mellon’s Gallery during our performative installation: “The Cruise”

Day1

I push the broom and the broom does the rest. Me, the waves and the broom in tune. We travel back and forth, the broom and me, crossing the oceans, back and forth. As longs as I push the broom. It’s just going on. Like the ocean. So all I have to do is trust the broom. Nothing to worry about as long as I trust the broom. As long as the broom picks up the dirt. May be that’s why people in here feel awkward when they are watching me clean. All they see is me. They don’t see the dirt, because it’s too small. And they don’t see the ocean, because it’s too big. All they see is me. The general dirt is spread out so evenly. It’s almost like the room has dirty lungs. Dirty Room lungs. When it exhales it covers everything. Like black snow, or dirty dandruff. I should start categorizing the dirt. What do we have? The room’s materialized puff out. I could call that the even dirt or dust, or cover dust. Then special areas where the ceiling comes down, like the buffet and table 1 and 2, I could call that the flake off, or the room shed. Paint particles, dry wall, iron, rust. Then the stuff passengers bring in, the general dirt from the outside or exterior dirt. What about the stains? I could measure their size. Rate their discoloration. Interpret their forms. Black tea spills versus peppermint. Variations in texture. No. The stains are actually not my domain. The stains are fiber trapped filth. I am only paid to deal with loose dirt. May be I should have put that hair into a zipper bag and saved it. If its true what they say, that they don’t dump anything while we are en route but take everything back home, then the hair should be still on board. Since we have departed, everything is, always has been and will be onboard. Nothing gets thrown out, nothing gets added. This thing is all-containing at all times. Me, the dirt, the broom, the crumbs, Jack’s hair. It’s all here. Just rearranging their positions, keeping the configurations in flow. That’s good. If anyone needs that hair, they could go and search for it in a black trash bag that sits in the freezer room. I clean the crumbs. No. actually we clean the crumbs together. The broom and me. I push them in. The broom eats them up. Once the trail is gone, they loose direction. End up with this cannibalistic witch in the boiler room. It’s true, the ship is old enough to be a forest and big enough too. Once lost it’s hard for anyone to find their way back to their stateroom. So many long hallways, so many doors, so much thick patterned carpet. I only have two of these left until the end of the week. I should safe the last one for major spills. But I have to change table five. The outlier remarked on the stains already. What did he say? The whiteness of his thoughts was interrupted by the marks of people he wasn’t interested in. I still like that guy. He is so rare, so unlikely. He is so distant from the rest of my data collection, numerically speaking. His appearance is so consistent. That’s why he is so unlikely. Because he is so consistent. Almost permanent like the ocean himself. The rest of the people show up mostly randomly, if they show up at all during tea time. I don’t even have a name for them. May be he belongs to a different population than the rest of my sample set. May be he’s not even a passenger. May be he is a stowaway. Or a steward. Or a janitor. May be he is Jack. Jack. Jack of hearts. Jack ass. Cracker Jack. If it wasn’t for his disappearance I wouldn’t be here. Instead of me it would be him. But what happens, once we return? What happens once we cross the point at which he got lost? Amazing that the universe cares about swirling around these useless particles. I wish I had this kind of energy. That’s how far I got involved with the universe. I dust around in it. It could be worse. I could be in retail again. I would like to get a real duster. With real feathers. A real high quality Ostrich Feather Duster from South Africa or something. It could become my companion. The captain married a parrot and I got an ostrich duster. That was such a funny joke the captain told yesterday. A nice clean captain’s joke. I should do something with this duster. Not just dusting. Spreading. I should … spread something on the surface. Contraption attracts dust via static electricity. Spreads bacteria via haphazard distribution. Pandemic. Pandora. Pandora’s box. All the evil let out, except hope. As if hope is an evil. As if I am evil hoping for that Jacker man. Hoping for his hair to be in a black trash bag. Hoping for his numbers to be lucky ones. Why does everyone who sits on these chairs has to play around with the fringes? Fondle them – like doll’s hair. Twist them with their twisted minds. The weather report! Let me get the book. My stats. What day is today? Yesterday was the 28^th. 12 non-tea drinkers. Eight tea drinkers. Three female. Five male. The outlier included. The sky is clear, the ocean is calm. It’s two days before new moon. It’s the 29^th of October, 2010. It’s a Friday. …it’s not really warm in here. Warm. But who’s complaining? We are in the dining room moving eastward. The new big happy family is all dressed up. The head waiter carries the menus across the International date line. The calendar resets. From now on, the days get shorter. Every 15 degrees we will loose another hour until the ship turns around and moves westward again. The travelers look out the portholes in search for the iceberg, but all they can see is an overwhelming amount of dark, calm, sameness. Or sadness. My shoes are squeaking. I guess that’s the leather’s way of saying: I am hungry. Jack ran so long and ran so fast, No wonder he ran out at last; He ran in debt – and then to pay, He distanced all, and ran away. The water is so cold, we must be close to Antarctica. The penguins are wondering. What’s going on? They think it’s strange. We are moving forward without advancing. 50 knots per hour. What shall I do with the lottery ticket? I should not keep it in my pocket any longer. 1 17 38 50 52 24 I don’t need Jack’s numbers. They are not lucky anyway. And it’s not his pocket anymore. It’s mine now. I am the new tea room janitor. What a strange guy. If I would play I would go with 123456. Same probability to hit the jackpot as every other combination. 1 to 18 million for single state lotteries. One to 120 Million for multiple state lotteries. The probability of dying from a bee sting is much more likely. 100.000 to one. On the other hand, if you don’t by a ticket the chances of winning are Zero. Some people’s heads almost explode at the little sandwiches, I think there must be something other-worldly about them. Bread without crust. I do agree that they are rather adorable. I wonder how Jack changed worlds. Did he just float there and watched us disappearing? Watched and waved and possibly screamed, as we were getting smaller and smaller and smaller until we were only a dot on the horizon and then an even tinier dot, until the dot got so small that it escaped his eyes. And all the time while we were thinking we were still the same huge vessel. And then he dropped a tear into the ocean and said: Whenever they find that tear, I will stop loving you. Only then. No, that’s not how it was. No one said he jumped. He’s proceeding according to plan, made his way into the boiler room. Became an apprentice of the witch. He suggests to cut a hole into the tanks. Drain the oil into the ocean and fill the vessel up with water. Over and over again. Until the entirety of the earth’s liquid body has been flushed through her hollow hull. I bet they don’t wash the cucumbers before they wax them. So, all the dirt get’s sealed under there. At least I am not sick anymore. There are 70.000 more germs on a computer keyboard than on a lavatory seat in a public bathroom. Who counted them? I wish there was Internet onboard so I could verify these numbers. But then I would have touch the keyboard. Forget about it. The woman in the office said, the day he disappeared he was 15 min. late. 15 minutes. What did he do in these 15 minutes? She said, he had a habit of being late. Yes Jack replied. I am always late on principle. My principle being that punctuality is the thief of time. I should stop stuffing jack’s mouth with quotes. It’s not fair. I hope no one shows up today, so I just can eat all the sandwiches myself. Not all of them, but a few. And some biscuits. But I should be careful with the biscuits. Just because they are free, doesn’t mean I have to eat them all. The average weight gain on a weeklong cruise is 8 pounds. 8 pounds per passenger per week. A medium slice of bread has 90 calories, in 10 grams of margarine are 40, plus the American cheese slice has 60. My pants don’t seem to be any tighter though. Still. Two Triangles are 280 calories. Meaning: I should eat not more than 7 sandwiches a day. That’s manageable. I never ate more than 4 a day so far. Oh, tea time. Now the fun part starts. I guess I like it better because of the background music. Easier to keep the flow. Easier to pass the time. “Hi, would you like some tea? We have a black tea we also have peppermint. If you want decaf, there is also a decaf black”. People are much more relaxed if they have less choices. If you offer them 2 kinds of tea they are grateful that they have a choice at all. If you offer them 15 kinds of tea they get upset if you don’t have the one they want. I should do it like Mr.Boone. Write letters to a dead dog. My own letters. To Strongheart. Dear old pal. How immense the ocean appears to the human mind is incalculable. I bet you find that funny. Dead dogs can laugh about such things. Let’s see if the napkin has helped? But it hasn’t been raining since two days anyway. They should be fine. Uh. Only two biscuits on the plate. Where are the others? They went to the doctor. Why? Oh, they felt crummy. I am approaching with two biscuits and 4 sandwiches, all covered with germs, but that’s besides the point. I am entertaining the probability of four events. 1. They don’t want anything. 2. The costumers choose a sandwich. 3. they choose a biscuit. 4. they take a sandwich and a biscuit each. And that’s exactly my problem. That I think only about what’s in front of me on my plate. “Would you like some tea biscuits or cucumber sandwiches?” Why do triangle sandwiches taste better than square ones? I don’t really know. I guess they are just easier to bite cause of the pointedness. With the square ones, all the four sides are the same. You don’t have a clue where to start biting. It’s all the same. With the triangle one, you automatically bite into one of the sharp corners. It’s the right thing to do. And, not only that, no one would bite into the big angle. The 60 degree one. The sharp corner just makes more sense. That’s why it tastes better. Because everybody automatically does the right thing. It just tastes better if you do the right thing. That- plus the taste of a little wonder. October 6^th, 2010, 1:25pm, that’s how she put it into the record. She said, when he came back that day he grabbed his bag and then was headed to the door again. She called to him from the office and asked where he was going. He yelled something and then left. She figured he would be right back. She followed him on the security cameras when he was walking on the outside deck. He was sitting in one of the deck chairs, just sitting there. Then he was laying down. Then she went out there to look for him and he was gone. I bet Jack thought he was special. And then they replaced him with me. Because I happened to be onboard in a position that was less necessary to be maintained. At least we are all in the same boat. I don’t even feel embarrassed for the captain anymore. He manages to keep the ship afloat in it’s bottle and the bottle adrift in the ocean. We are still in existence. Date, time, Longitude, latitude, temperature, humidity, direction of wind, description of the sky, deepness of the ocean, hours of daylight left, recommended onboard activities to pass the time. If all conditions are known, then we have certainty. Even if the numbers are kind of random. Then at least we have measured uncertainty. Why did everybody know his name? No one knows mine. No one ever asked. And no Internet onboard to google anyone. As if we are in the last century. I can not even look up what happened to Jack. We are navigating the world via a vessel. The timing is so wrong though. The place is so wrong. We are not even a place. A transition at most. It’s so wrong to be on a ship. It’s wrong to be on an airplane too, but it’s even worse to be on a ship. At least if you like company, in airplanes you’ve got company. Here all you got is time. Slow time on top of that. Too slow for any kind of adventures. Even the ocean feels old. When he was young, he was wild. Now he is just an old permanent institution. Like a museum with ships on display. An old fishless body. An old fishless body that enables beachfront with white bikinis lying around. An old boneless body. One who’s intestines get eaten away by people who float around on cruise ships. People who gain 8 pounds a week average. I wonder when this Russian couple will show up and tell me their sugar story again. It must be even worse for the teeth. Take the sugar cube, squeeze it between your teeth and the inside of your cheeks and then let it slowly dissolve with every sip of strong black tea. Of course that tea has to get boiled in a samovar. Only then it will relieve toska. Toska. Such a nice word for such a heavy burden on the Russian spirit. Toska. I like the plain butter biscuit better than the coconut. They are a little bit more classy. May be the butter goes better with the milk flavor. One biscuit dunk in 5 ends in a disaster. The starches swell, the sugar starts to dissolve. If you leave it in too long, the wetted biscuit collapses underneath it’s own weight. Much more challenging then donut dunking. I bet she is watching me. That’s ok. I am allowed to have a break. Nothing is better than eternal happiness. A cup of tea is better than nothing. Therefore, a cup of tea is better than eternal happiness. No. You can’t equate nothing-as-a-thing with nothing-as-absence-of-a-thing. It’s invalid logic. Oh Stop it. My stomach acts like an octopus. Urgh, here it comes again. Stop hugging my heart. Don’t octopuses have three hearts? Who told me that? Two pump blood through the gills and one pumps blood through the body. I guess it makes sense. If I had to live on the ocean floor and had to use eight arms to crawl around, I’d probably want to have two extra hearts. Why is that gigantic trough up there on the ceiling? It’s gotten so quiet. Just because I hear the engine rumbling down there doesn’t mean anything. Look at these ruins. like dried up mini oceans. Pacific– gone. Atlantic –gone. Indian, gone. If I am doing the dirt statistics, should I include dirty dishes as well? What kind of dirt is that? Human saliva, lipstick, grease, food leftovers, tea. I should be a farmer. Really put my hands into it. Soil is so much more interesting than dirt anyway. Probably healthier for the brain too. One shovel of soil contains more living things than humans ever born. Isn’t that amazing. I should get a microscope. Really put things in perspective. No. A microscope gets you as far as a telescope. Such a strange space. To be in the hull. In an airtight container underwater. All the forces that are in effect. 70.000 tons of heaviness. I don’t even know the number of the water that gets displaced under such a weight. It’s remarkable that we are floating. Floating like a log from a burned down forest. It’s amazing what the human mind can achieve. What human history has built. But then, in the middle of everything, in the middle of this big vast ocean, we suddenly realize: Oh we forgot the dishwasher. We forgot to build one in. The hot water boiler is broken. There are no towels to dry the dishes. We are running out of soap. But at least we are still managing to tell each other jokes. That’s what the captain taught me. The power of the daily joke. Let’s get out of the hull. The hollow hull. Let’s finish business upstairs in the superstructure.   I am curious how well I timed everything today. Yesterday was such a mess up. 10 minutes late. 10 minutes. I had the whole day. A whole day to collect a couple of crumbs. A whole day to serve 10 cups of tea and a couple of sandwiches, and still, I didn’t manage to do it in time. I guess that’s why I ended up on a ship. To get my timing in tune. Yesterday I closed the door at 10 past six. If the captain would screw up like this we would never get back home. But I have the feeling I did ok today. Let’s see. I think I made it. 5:59 pm. 30 seconds left.