The bridge of San Luis Rey

The bridge was love. The bridge that connected one side to the other was nothing more than love. The pieces of wood held together by the strength of some ropes swung above the abyss held by love. Love that is all too often overlooked. Love, that is all too often secret and silent. Love that one has not for the heart of another, but for the body and soul, mind and character of any other. Love that seems to have its grip on all aspects of human life, entwined with the thorns, climbing and growing its way to our hearts like a beautiful weed that one cannot kill, not through the lack of will or force, but through the lack of strength and bravery. Humility, holding the hands of bravery cannot be expected to bow before the vanity of our existence. But love flies like a bird released from captivity. Love if allowed will capture and discover every hidden grotto and corner just to bring to the surface something magical and incomprehensible. But love, I dare not. I am like many others, like all others, ridden with vanity and pride, love for no one else, but myself. I seek to better myself through the mirror of friends, family, but the love that I should release stays untouched for if it was let to fly, it would brake its wings and slowly but surely die. It would fall to the hole below together with those who found love and peace in the golden days of Peru, and die instantly from the shock of freedom. This short life is about finding the object of affection. But people, times, habits, desires, ambitions and methods do not change. Nothing in mankind has changed. Since the beginning of time we have yearned for the support and the nurturing, the soothing words and the pampering. There is no greater gift than the gift of love and we fight battles to pass the time with the love trapped in a helium balloon flying sky high escaping the reach of any of us. We fly machines after it into the sky and send people jumping out into the clouds to try to catch, but alas it flies. Every place, every person, every instant is a step closer to understanding that love is or us all. You may burn the one that says so. You may drown the spirit that suggests so. But you will never get rid of the wanting of love creeping into our hearts, mind, body and soul. For we need to belong. We need to walk the bridge of San Luis Rey just so we can find our selves in this lonely world and find the strength, the voice to say: love is all.

Dear Old Friend

People come and go. People live and die and love and survive. There’s always yearning for something more. I feel that I can never be complete. The darkness that descends by surprise is never far. The love that keeps me sane is completely separate from reality. But there’s this void, this whole, this physical yet purely psychological phenomenon that not only haunts me but runs twice as fast as me. I have no chance. I have no freedom but the freedom of captivity. The emptiness is never filled simply covered. People who are tired leave. They leave the race and find a resting place far far away.
The angels, the tiny little angels grow weary of the task of guiding humanity in a direction desirable to the gods above. The god of void is looking at us every minute, wanting to see change. Wanting to rid himself of the responsibility of safekeeping the void. There’s a picture on his bedroom wall.
I want to cry for myself. I want to see innocent angels invade my life and fly in circles around my room. I want to see dear old friends come to life. I want to hear the sweet music of angels made of wood, made of stone, drawn on windows secretly once more. If the world was to break down and leave us all stranded, there will surely be at least one kind soul to take us by the hand and guide us through the mess. The white angels will lift their heads and look into our eyes as they whisk us far away from this lonely life. He flies like a bird, he sees nothing that can stop his heart from screaming out love. His ropes are gracefully held by tiny hands of golden haired angels. There is no worry in his eyes, there is no sign of the struggle he always was forced to deny.
How will eyes of laughter and faces of smiles appear again? How can we see the magic that’s invisible? He imagines a world where there is no pain and no void to fill. The curtains get pulled aside. People get to choose their lives and dear old friends answer all the questions whilst staying behind. The hearts stay young and freeze on a moment so joyous to all. There are no signs of fear. There’s nothing there that reminds any of them of the void. The angels with their purple dresses and their golden flutes blow the uncertainties away.
I may never see them again. I may never feel the love, the joy, the sadness of a dear old friend. But hold my hand and tell me that we will smile. But take my pain in your tiny little hands: my dear old friend, say the words that you’ve begged for me to have.

How will we smile, ever again? I’m asking you sincerely, my dear old friend.

Old Loves and Dreamy Eyes

It was a long, lonely night. There seemed no sense in making the best of the times alone. There was something missing. There was nothing to fill the void of love. There came no screams of pledges promising undying devotion and a never-ending love. But who knows what they wanted to hear? Who knows whether love was at all what they had in mind... Because it is easy to assume that love means roughly the same thing to most. That it brings warmth and yearning, that it tricks the round into thinking it’s square. This was a feeling of utter desperateness. This was no mood that a nice glass of cold liquor could have cured. This was by no means a matter to be handled lightly. As the night progressed they seem to have become more and more demanding. They wanted to see what is naked to the eye. They sat concentrating eternally on that moment, on that wish of happiness. They wanted to gather all the strength that they collectively could to try and move the Earth in the opposite direction. For love makes mountains move…But they never could. The air was still and silence hung in the middle of the room like a great big clock with a pendulum to chime at every hour and yell the fact into the dreaming faces that time is slowly and rapidly moving forward. Nothing was thought to have done in vain. The night could have been lonely, but for them, who chose the company of their own memories, no night was ever lonely. When everything that’s gone turns into reality, turns into a distorted reality of the mind, then no night can ever be lonely. It’s a natural defence mechanism and from time to time it proves to work.
Where is he? Came the question and no answer followed. He was everywhere. He was in the mind, he was buying dinner, he was lying low in the trenches, he was the one who was sitting right next to them. The question circled in the room. An almost inaudible wailing followed the desperate cry, for he was gone. He was gone, but he was living a life lived many a year ago. That night, just like this was long and lonely. There seemed no hope, but his pretty face covered the screen of memories. That night might have been an ordinary night, but magic was created. The type of magic that can live on forever and ever. He had a careless smile and ran around in circles trying to prove that he could defy the laws of gravity. He was a force to be reckoned with. The fall is only really bad, when the expectations of landing are moved beyond the reasonable. They missed each other. It’s a lie that a void can slowly be filled, that a void that was mine can slowly be yours. Where is he? How much drugs can make the past come back to life? ...

Far, far, far

Everything seems a little too far. Every feeling, every experience, every love, every tear, everything. I place myself on an entirely different plane and I find that everything’s a little too far away. I see only distorted images that are engraved in my memory, but are not living. The past is not living in me, it’s stale and dead and left behind. And then I delude myself with thinking that I connect so well with every little bit of history, of my own history. I think that time is never against me. That distance only exists on paper. That I can trick everyone who says being far is being gone into believing that I will be the first to defy that statement. But reality sinks in and I know that I’m far too far.

No matter how perfect now is, and it is almost always perfect, I miss the then and I fear the next. I hold my breath until now comes again and takes the place of the next. I bind myself in this box of a paradox so that I never have to face my fears. I look back, never in anger, always with love and think that by looking back, I actually live the past. I think that by thinking about the past, I manage to make time stand still. I think that just maybe I have enough power to never just lose, but win this battle that I don’t even realise I’m fighting. But then, there’s always something to remind me that I’m far too far.

Habits don’t scare me and the new doesn’t scare me and I even dare to wave out of the window of my train slowly pulling away from all that I once knew. This is simply my plight and my pledge and my bleeding sorrow upon realising that time does indeed move linearly and I am together with all of you, moving with it. That I’m too small and too mortal to have an effect, to know and have the power to change the direction of our conveyor belt. And this is the reason that I get ripped out of the now and thrown into the next. This is why I feel far. Far too far.

But before I go insane, I learn to walk away. Head straight up, take the pain, take all that you can muster to take. So I leave the love. I leave the key. I leave the happy to see happier days commence with me. I leave people and places. I leave dinner and wines and tables and laughter. I meet people. I join dinners, wines and laughter. I shed everything, I bear the pain of a fleshless existence and then I learn to grow more beautiful skin. Every season I appear to be more than before. But as I get pulled away and the places and people grow ever smaller, I realise that screaming, “hey don’t forget me” will only confirm my fear that I’ve been moved too far away. Far too far away.

Táncház

The feet were thumping.
The floorboards were cracking.
The music was wooing everyone to give in and join the circle of people passionately moving.
The eyes were gleaming.
The heads were turning.
The feet were thumping.
The only light that stayed lit showed the air swiftly glowing.
The skirts were flying.
The men were sweating.
The instructions were compelling every idle foot to move quickly and rhythmically.
The sound was deafening.
The mood heightened with every foot thumping.

The girls were singing.
The boys were dancing.
The pairs were kissing.
The music was never ending.
The beers were flowing.
The mood was unchanging.
The world seemed healing.
The words were moving.
The eyes were gleaming.
The heads were turning.
The skirts were flying.
The men were sweating.
The feet were thumping.
The speed was continuing.
The passion was rising.
The singing was louder.
The dancing was faster.
The singing was louder.
The music was faster.
The singing was louder.
The THUMPING was ending.

The fog was descending.
The memory was fading.
The passion was burning.
The mist was hanging.
The lights were reflecting.
The sweat was drying.
The music was ending.
The air was cooling.
The river was flowing.
The whimsical night was descending.

Autumn

“Itt van az ősz, itt van újra”. I wonder if there’s any way of escaping the clichés, the allegories and the synonyms for autumn. Because there’s death, change, slowly slipping away written everywhere where there’s a mention of autumn. I think it’s simply beauty. This weekend had everything that autumn can encompass. There were the trees that have begun to dress up in a million coloured dresses. There were the cemeteries that flickered until the eye could see, warming the lost souls and reminding the living of the imminent end. Things faded away, slipped away, leaves fell, people dead, flowers frozen, candles burnt. But this weekend could not have been more beautiful.

Irony lurks at every street corner. Here I am talking about change, about things ending or moulding into something else and time yet again fails me. Time that should move in a linear matter seems to me to be an escalator that moves in the opposite direction to how I want to go. The ultimate test. So I sit and scribble any old thing that comes to my head. Sometimes with structure, but most of the time, just carelessly slipping out and channelling down my fingers into the keys on the keyboard. The simple juxtaposition of well-chosen words impresses people. Pieces of me get published in the most unexpected places. Then comes the subject of such writings: people, places, feelings, time and the past.

It seems very fitting that the autumn should represent letting go and let go I must. There is only one thing I have not been able to fully let go of and that’s love. Not love the romantic notion, not love embodied by another human being, but love that binds me eternally to time. Love that sees no reason for mercy and chains me to a path that twirls round and round towards the place it started from. Love that is no longer love, but a superior state of anxiety firmly establishing a choking grip on my soul. Now this, I must let go of. This I must not let creep back into my life. And come autumn and come cleansing. Ironically, the one that past writings have been about can no longer be reached. Time, love and anger have joint forces to shut down the only vessel that breathed simply to hurt me, to haunt me, to torture me. But now it’s all gone. Even if I wanted to – and humans have a tendency to want to rip old wounds open just to feel the pain and mask in the glory of living- I could not find the road back to self destruction: for he is gone and I am free.

Life slips out of nature; leaves cover the sidewalks and hide enormous deadly wells for us to fall into. But the beauty of it all maybe overrides the evil, the sorrowful and the lost.

Photography - up, close and dark....a tale of the process of developing stills

For a minute I went blind. It seemed unreal at first that such darkness could ever exist. But it did and the light was not given mercy or shown the way in. I sat there waiting for the minutes to pass, trying to pretend that what I was not seeing was not scaring me. “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Should I believe a so naïve and beautiful, idealistic and romantic statement? It was dark. It was dark for a long time. A fraction of a second was recorded on a piece of celluloid then darkness descended. A lot can happen without the eye ever catching a whim of what is going on. There is time to contemplate, to ponder, to reflect. Fear can overshadow even the most inviting darkness, but to live fearlessly one has to give up life itself. I ventured not this far, but only as far as imagining life without sight, for I had the time and the complete darkness. I was moved by the inability, by the temporary paralysis. The mouth was moving, the hands were free, but there seemed no logical reason to move anything for there was no end in sight. There was no sight. All this because the film was being developed. Because the scratching micro particles of the light left their outline of the blurred figure sitting on the bench. We tried to recall history. We tried to bring back a moment from the past, the entity that we thought we could never rule over. But that as well has been lost to the power of the mortal man. Light kills the evidence of the past ever existing, so we hid it as well as we could. The film has to be developed to document even if it’s only portraits of unrecognisably insignificant deities. First comes the fumes, then there’s the long bath in the chemicals, that’s when it gets dark. Then there’s more bathing, rinsing and hanging. This process involves only the imagination, for when light comes the image is still faded, blurred, mirrored and echoes of halfness ring through it. But it’s means to a picture, to a piece of debatable history. Taking pictures is playing with the light and accepting the darkness that seems like an eternity. Taking pictures is seeing more than others take in and going blind for a minute.

Walking silently with Bartók

The night was cold. Much colder than I thought it can be in October. I'm no longer used to these cold nights. I'm used to sea washed air that carries the sweet warmth of some nearby under ocean stream. All I had to warm me was some melody pouring into my ears and the thought that I would be home soon. The big yellow beast was speeding down the hill towards the river. The Danube was dark and glittering. It was reflecting mightily the little signs of life, the lights that people light in their wonderful homes. Wonderful I presume, for why would they not be wonderful? If I was to imagine stories of terror and tears, I would have been colder than I already was. I sat patiently on my wooden seat and pleaded with the naughty breeze not to blow towards me.

I drifted in a deep sleep. I almost missed my stop. The great Calvin would not have humoured my idleness. He who took no rest in devotion, who offered his whole being and even more to the Lord would have found my inaptness frustrating. Calvin who was not fastidious but would not have crept out in the middle of the night to nail the declaration of the reformation on the doors of the Wittenberg Church, yet in unison he declared mercilessly: no music, no painting, no saints, no confession, no nothing that stands between man and God. Holy I am not. A sinner I am fully and Calvin would not have humoured me.

I hurriedly traced my steps back to my third floor apartment. But my mind was racing and I was engulfed by the music blaring into my ears. A glance to the left and I am on the path of Bartók again. A statue. A statue of not the man in his full figure, but a symbolic one, just abstract pieces representing him. I follow the great master to great lengths.

The journey started somewhere in a small town in Hungary called Eger, where I sat behind a grand piano at the age of six for the first time. My every move was watched. It was decided I had no remarkable talent, but I can learn if I want to. Mother and father said: “she wants to”. Bartók came with his étude. I hit the keys on the piano and thought “this Bartók guy wrote some pretty easy and very much boring stuff. Why is he a great composer? Even I with little talent and almost non-existent motivation can play it. What’s the big deal?” The years passed and my love for the piano levelled somewhere between tolerance and indifference. There seemed no point in continuing. The études stopped contributing to my afternoons and Bartók left just as silently as he entered. Bartók who seemed to be an enigma, since I knew some of his work but never knew anything about the man, only a faint picture on the inside cover of my piano book. The picture lingers.

A man of considerable genius and I continue my journey. Bartók enters again many many years later. In that blissful year of 2004 I was accustomed to walking the streets of London. Budapest being a long way away, Bartók never having entered my mind once since that shameful episode with the étude. Yet I come across a sign on a music shop’s door announcing the unveiling of a Bartók statue right there in South Kensington. The restaurant opened, it was on my way to the bank, the sun was shining, so I went to see. I saw every day to and from work. I saw and tipped my invisible hat that after such a long time, after I thought Bartók will never again set foot in my life with his boring and bland pieces of five finger piano bashing, he came back. Talent and travel are the two things that make a man great.

Crossing over the Danube the yellow tram swirls down the hill on Bartók Street. Minutes after the Calvin Square where I get off, there is a Bartók statue in the garden of a university building. I am walking in the footsteps of giants. I must be doing something right...