What’s One More Time?

And when I say these things, I show my truest self for you. For you to be able to see. Almost like an open letter, this is for you, Friend. Parts of you will be hiding in these lines somewhere, hiding from the blinding lights that illuminate my soul. I will try to protect you, but you must know just how much it hurts me to not see you.

For what’s a girl if she’s all alone? There’s only a handful of guarding angels around me and I managed to lose sight of you. Giving you up to the world, for the greater good, is something I can learn to live with, but it’s almost like a struggle each day. You hold all four corners of the world safe from the ludicrous and evil haunting. At one point you knew me as the girl who lived so close, in your heart, in your street. Now you’re stationed so far from me it’s sometimes hard to understand. What happens when I need you so close I can’t stop the tears from arriving? Who will know what hurts for me when I hardly speak a word? There’s so much want in my heart, longing to be just a little nearer. Distance is not the culprit, I cannot make him sole bearer of blame, but I feel him robbing friends from me and leaving me with sad lonely nights like these.

When I picture a day, long from today, ahead in time, somewhere on the horizon, I see you there with me. Perfect in all ways, dancing and laughing madly about the silly memories that tie an invisible rope between you and me. Tangled we’d lie in the tall grass, sharing the paths that have lead us to each other. Reaching out, I might be even able to touch the moment before it dissolves under the unknown sky. Just thinking of that day, the burden lessens and I breathe a little easier, waiting with all my might to exhale.

I wish I could say that fear never paralyses me, but with most certainty I can demonstrate it is the one single thing that does. Fear of never being good enough. Fear of never doing enough. Fear of losing, leaving, faking, lying, dying. Fear of meeting you and then having to spend decades or lifetimes without you. Fear of having to find friends to replace you. Because you are holding a part of me that I have entrusted in your care. I only asked – keep that part of you sincere, innocent, raw, and ready to dream. I will come back for me. I will be back for you. When the fear of not having a boy to love, not knowing whose name to call, when loneliness like a black shadow overcomes, you will be the one I run to. Then you will have to turn in the self you’ve been keeping safe for me. Will you be able to do that for me?

I miss you: all of you. You’re my army of strength, my tower of virtue, my only proof that some of my choices have led me to find magic. Day after day I am reminded that love is never enough, but with you in my life I even dare to believe that love can take a backseat if the ropes that connect us are securely tied at all our ends.

Just promise me you’ll never stray too far from me. Tell me that the rain you see will fall on my head one day. Tell me it’s not too long before I see you. Tell me again, what’s one more time?

Before Christmas

It’s supposed to start snowing right about now. When I wake up, the white blanket of soft water should cover all the earthy and vulgar that tread under my feet on my morning stroll to work. Snow’s late this year, forgot to descend, was probably busy filling the world’s reservoirs and flood plains somewhere far away. It’s at least cold here. Is it cold where you are? I can imagine a brownish, greyish, blackish Christmas, but not a sunny, yellow, changeless Christmas. It’s most definitely just a case of what you grew up with and therefore denote as normal. Snow covered whiteness is normal for me at Christmas. Bitter cold is normal for me at Christmas. Frozen sidewalks and bus stops are normal for me at Christmas. Angels, Jesus, glitter, lights, smells of freshly cut pine trees, coats oozing the distinct odour of naphthalene balls: these things are normal for me at Christmas. A sense of peace and happiness are what feel normal to me at Christmas.

Can you remember the last time you noticed a perfect ending to an almost perfect day? Of course perfection isn’t always the answer, but near perfect is attainable and through that, near happy must linger somewhere low enough to be reached. It must. Just before Christmas people turn a little crazy. They give themselves a doze of intolerance and hate towards each other, but we should try and look beyond that, or forgive their trespassing, because after all, this whole malarkey around at the moment is meant solely to celebrate the abundant love: the bond that is between us humans, the real answer to every question of doubt ever raised over our existence. It’s as simple as that: love.

Just before Christmas I wish I could take you with me all the way to New York City. Even if the past means nothing anymore, somehow travelling in an almost unnoticed sky brings us all closer to who we are. Maybe we could use this to let our best selves shine. Buying into the spirit of the holidays a little, maybe we could let the mirror reflect the selfless, loving, endearing parts of ourselves. However hard it is, maybe it's worth a try.

I hope that when I wake up it will be white outside. I hope the huge snowflakes can make people forget the dirty deeds of their souls. By the time the snow arrives, I’d like a clean slate, something liberating, and something meaningful in these dull days. By the time the snow arrives, I want it to be Christmas.

My Very Own Press On Tattoo

In this snowless winter, I walk the streets of this magnificent city and feel my legs go numb from the cold, my eyes water from the wind, my hands sweat from the warmth in my pocket, my mind wandering freely as if it was a summer breeze. The huge boat that hurries down the river, splitting the surface, creating waves, turning over the white side of the water, makes the mossy river look warm. The wind throws me off balance as I stumble over the bridge and I feel a bizarre desire to jump into the seemingly lukewarm water as if it was a scorching summer day.

In my apartment, sheltered from the wind and the cold, I sit unprotected from the fragile thoughts of others. Words that pierce through me, having just left the lips of another tangled soul. Someone far away. Then everything I want to be magnifies and there’s a sudden rush of ambitions, of self-confidence, of fearlessness. Before I move my hands back towards my chest to cover my heart, I embrace the invisible frailty and beauty, hoping that one day they will accompany me as visible friends on my long and wearisome journey.

With each day passing I try to make peace with the fact that I may never be loved the way I wish. If I cannot learn to wear all of me on the sleeve of my warm winter coat, I grow cold with fear that there may never be anyone to see me. I shyly and timidly try to uncover parts of my soul with each word I choose to sit on a page. Protected and wrapped I hand them over to you. If you’re careful enough, you will uncover the thoughts that have not been tempered with, that have not been disgraced, that sit guarding their brothers and sisters who have not left my fingers yet. They’re held together with the long and thin rope of this kite that sails in the air, circling around, waiting for you to catch a glimpse. If I was braver, you would know. But home is far and my words have only as much strength as I do and only as much confidence as I allow for them to have. The rest, the rest of the fight, I have to undertake alone. My hands bear wounds from deep cuts they have endured whilst protecting my heart. The pain becomes physical and my heart stays vulnerable.

The broken images that lay before me whispered unforgettable memories. She fell asleep to the most beautiful Rosie Thomas songs. He sat with his eyes closed, strumming his guitar to the sound of her voice. And I have my very own press on tattoo. All the while, I failed to see that my plants are miserably unhappy, sitting under my window, feeding off each others’ lonely looks and resting their roots in the tired soil I make them live in. Forget about the needs of my soul, forget about trying to take care of the muddled emptiness that’s around, forget about tying myself to a kite to leave this life, forget the immense beauty in loneliness, forget the yearning for another because there are three little flowers who are calling for me. And I call them: these friends of mine. These friends of mine.

What’s a boy to do?

Let’s try jumping into the unknown at the same time. Let’s try to thrust ourselves down from the top of a building, you holding my hand. If we have each other the fall might not be so horrific, but only if you’ll hold me. Have me.

Here’s the whole of me, the hidden parts are meant to make you fall in love with me. What you see not will once make me who I am to you. Just hold me and make me see. If the fog clears up, I will find myself holding you, staring into your mischievous eyes, placing all my hopes in the palm of your hands. Take very good care of them.

The pages will read: he makes me silent. He makes my world and my all, still. What I need is his touch and everything else falls into place or mysteriously falls apart. I cannot tell where I end. I cannot tell if this love is what makes sense to me. What’s a boy to do when the girl knows not what she has to know? He makes me silent. He makes me still.

I could love you, I could love you well. I shudder when you walk past me. Did you see me? How much more can my weak and lonely heart take? Why does it always find the boy who never intended to care? It gets itself into so much trouble and pain and silly heart never is the wiser for the mayhem it creates. But you? You could be the one to save it from drowning. Look at me, just smile at me. Sit beside me. Hug me. Be like you always are and I’ll dream on while you play with my hair. Let only these four walls know that I secretly have given my heart to you.

If in the silence and stillness you can see who I am, then come and love me.

What's a boy to do with a girl like me?

Masters of Poetry - A tribute to the Black Cat

Has anyone ever told you that you look like Sylvia Plath? Or that you sing like Mary Cassatt? Paint like Nina Simone? Is that all irrelevant? The frown on your face scares those around you. Your shoe is a size smaller than you need. My picture won’t fit in it. For the first time you realise that being who you are and not knowing who that can be is the most frightening state of being. The boy is not by your side.

If you can fall in love for a day, then that was me, in love, yesterday. The old love has been laid to rest. One moment erased all that imaginary wonder. If another comes and wants to be the boy in those songs, wants to learn the parts and play along, I will let him. Love can be a feather light paperweight on my bare back. Please don’t leave scars, just a gentle touch. Say you were here but stroke, don’t carve. From time to time I will think about how it might have been. But what’s gone is flying freely in the wind. What never was is kept in a safe place. What is coming, I welcome with open arms. For now, I’ll head out alone and hope for the best.

Sitting on the kerb, a black cat appeared. Are you musicians? - he asked. No, we’re magicians. We’re masters of trickery. We can make you disappear. We can chain you, shove you in a box, put swords through you, saw you in half and still bring you out in one piece. How would you like to join me for a cocktail? The black cat, crossing his legs as he sat in his armchair, lit a cigar and puffed away as he spoke. I’ve seen men before - he said, but never a man in love, what will he do? Us magicians looked baffled, but knew how to remedy this gap in the cat’s knowledge. Fraudulent times - we started. A man in love does not equate a man who looks in love. Sincerity is deceitful, but a man in love will stumble through his life and have only his love on his mind. Alone at night he will head out to find peace with another soul. Leaving the heavy, burdensome life, a man in love will build a palace on his dreams. Melodies, pages, verses will be created. A man in love will walk and walk and walk and with worn through shoes collapse in the arms of the one he loves. A man in love will become vulnerable.

Like Milton let his Adam and Eve have the choice, I will let you choose as well. Not between me and someone else, but between the me you see and the me you don’t. Here is the me you don’t. There? There is someone I have made only for you. When you find me, please let me be who I need to be.

Has anyone ever told you that you look like Sylvia Plath?

P.S. Don’t even try to argue this one. No reason or rhyme was indented for it. Just words juxtaposed in these fraudulent times. But thanks for sticking by me anyway…

The Most Perfect Love

I’ve found and lost the most perfect love. All in the space of three days I flew to Himalayan highs and descended to abysmal lows. Then with a breeze I smiled and moved on. Even the most seemingly perfect dies when it is lifted to reality.

Another soul brushed so close to mine I shook. I heard, I felt, I saw when my eyes were firmly shut. I was ready to reach out; I was almost ready to believe. For a moment I froze, unable to move, standing to watch what would happen. I let myself be captured and mesmerized forever. In another time and place, maybe even on another plane, this man would have been perfect for me. He would have whispered sweet words only to me. He would have composed sweet melody only for me. He would have carried me in the palm of his hands. I would have created pages and pages for only him. I would have shown him all that I have secretly done for him. He would have wanted to make me laugh. I would have wanted to cry each time he had to take leave and journey back to his world. We would have dreamt separate only to conjoin at the end.

The irony of love is that it continually evades perfection. Expectations high, mercilessly waiting, evil resolutely holding its grip on the thinnest fracture appearing in the foundations. And then like a hermit I hide again, afraid that my heart could not withstand another love’s deadly clench. It would die like in the hands of the one before. I would cringe to a foetal position if he left, exactly as with the one before. Broken and wounded I would drag my lifeless dream behind me and he would no longer see, just like the one before did never see. I would build everything up again, learn to go on without him, learn to let the yearning subside and watch as he waves goodbye. I would die again and again like in the hands of the one before.

This perfect love never was, but he is already gone. I could not have bore to loose him to any other woman but her. Now I know that they are a two in perfect harmony. Two beautiful people, two beautiful lives, making beautiful dreams come alive. Sensitive to the cruelness of the world, open eyed about the injustices, careful with the words they let fly into the sky. Love sleeps tangled with them and gently releases its power that sedates them into forever holding dear the potency of creation. I understand. I take my weak heart and treasure it for someone else.

Then I step out of this dream and watch as the world spins madly on.

I Wish I Could

Somewhere between the dark days and their equally frightening light sisters, I stand numb and unable to move because my dream rushes past me. My soul shrinks to the size of a pea and is tied to the fastest car that whizzes by; it’s already ripped from me. I watch as they dance and sing on the other side: I feel invisible, I feel ignored. In my perfect isolation I crouch and find solace on a steady rock. Unable to cross, unwilling to look away, I stay at arm’s length from where I want to be. Forever.

I wish I could unzip a different person from underneath the skin coat I wear. A more vibrant, a more determined, a more powerful person. Someone who caught the moment and hung onto it. Transported to another time but staying true to ideals, I would join those who dance and sing on the other side. I would have courage and strength to walk into the room with all the words I’ve recorded on paper. I would staple my pages onto my skin and parade around so everyone would admire. And they would welcome the me who was brave and talented, unafraid of ambitions and free of inhibitions.

In the middle of the place I would stretch out my arms and spin ‘till I collapsed dizzy and happy. Faster and faster, unable to pay attention to anything around me. Nothing would embarrass me and I would share my all with those who smilingly welcomed every ill formed idea, every ill formed page. There I would find myself. Completely comfortable, I would nurture my budding dream. Then my every wish would be answered.

Only then would I no longer wish that I could.

Till then, each and every night, I wish that I really could.

In The Moment

In the mood of the moment. In the heavy burden of the moment, I sit and write what is most painful for my heart. There are days when the light comes to shine on me. There are others when it comes to torture me. The mirror shows nothing less and nothing more, the fact stares me in the face and makes the days endless.

I dream of white. I dream of innocent white. I tangle the sheets below me and lead a desperate search for you. You might just be lost in the covers, I might find you if I looked reverently. I hang onto the dream tight, unable to stand upright in front of the truth. The pain circles my heart and thinks of new ways to show itself for the light. In the now all that I live for seems irrelevant.

If I let myself be lost in the moment, I might make it through the day. I might not break down at the thought of only you. I might be able to see you for who you are. I want nothing to do with you and you’re the most perfect person for me. What are we to do now? Twist my senses and let me believe that this can last forever. Leave me drenched in your love or leave me yearning for more. I will take what you give and I will not ask. Tell me deep secrets and let me write down your words. I don’t want to forget come daylight.

I shake when you see me. I crumble when you fall in love with me, each day over and over again. I let the wings of your love carry me off to safety. I let your words pierce through me. I collide with the power, a greater force, just to be in your presence. It’s you. Nothing can change what I see in you. No one can make me stop loving you.

In the moment I’m you. In the moment we’re one. If there is sense in time, I forever stay your love.

The wind blew the fine sand towards the east

The wind blew the fine sand towards the east. Each dancing particle flew away carrying the tiny seeds of hope. The dunes grew only on one side and the rugged scenery was a sign of summer preparing to leave. The sun rose and the shore glittered from the million coloured sand, reflecting the powerful orb. The sand in patches was held firmly to the ground by scattered traces of grass and other plants. These tied their roots deep down, securing every single tiny part so the sand could no longer run. The wind blew through their loose leaves, but their soil remained unmoved.

The cliffs stood towering above the water. The gentle ocean stream was rubbing the shore, dividing sand from shell, fish from waste. The dunes, with islands of grass on top of them watched as the sun first stroke them, then played its game with the waves of the giant water.

The wind carried on its symphony, ruffling the tall, burnt looking grass. The moment was motionless, then unleashed: the foaming ocean rocked back and forth from land to a deep well. Birds were eying their prey, circling high in the air, barely able to keep their bearings amidst the wind that tossed them at will. Each creature, safe in its resting place, was deep in slumber, unable to crawl to the humbling state of being.

Dawn met only those who had purpose to salute the day in its infancy. The lonely boathouse stood on a cliff overlooking the beach. It housed a mild mannered ark, with simple dreams and masters who fed off the fruits of Nature. The fishermen pushed their heavy wooden boats onto the water. The nets tangled, hung from the side, waiting for weary fingers to undo what the wild waters have heaved. The journey they must make is familiar both to machine and man. Each coming day, they embark on a path that sees the ocean divide under the fearless spine of the old boat. The nets spread across the unimaginable water, endless at all angles, unpredictable at each moment. The men on the boats, sitting silently, as the fish swim to their deaths. Waiting for the sun to rise and the bitter cool to leave and take with it the misty air hanging low at the shore. Then they return, count the blessing and curse, leave the boat to rest till the next dawn when they will need to slit across the back of the black water, deep into the midst of the unknown, each day further, to find new prey.

The silence of the shore was only seldom broken. Each living thing, plant and animal was waiting the return of the wanderers at sea. Nothing stirred until their silhouettes were traced on the horizon. But morning saw them leap from shore to sea, before anyone else but the birds and cliffs could see.

The boy woke, his lashes covered in sand, his dark hair turned almost golden from the pillow of sand he lay his head on to rest. He arrived with the darkest night and took refuge in the grass. Morning woke not only the birds and wind around him, but also his dreamy eyes and much travelled heart. He lifted his head to look around and with a smile on his face acknowledged the scenery he descended to. Glancing upwards he waved to his stars and then caught the luring rhythm of the ocean. He tapped on his knee as each swish hurled towards him. Sitting there, he was barely taller than the grass. A boy with an appearance not more than eight years old, yet with mischief in his eyes telling tales of a hundred year old. He shook his head to release the trapped sand and let the wind brush through. He stood and breathed the untamed air. His clothes were intact, his hair again dark, his eyes green from the curiosity of a child. He smelt the grass and then the sand; then he understood that he has to smell the water to know where he had come. He ran from the dune towards the open. As he went close enough, he could see the tiny boats appear, coming from their daunting trips. He could wait no longer and hurried time for them to reach the shore .

Two boats, four men altogether, none of them looking pleased with the catch. Their old faces were deepened by wrinkles that ran from eye to chin. The sparkle in their eyes; lost at sea long ago. The fingers bulky and useless in the cold. The skin hard and uncomfortable as ever. The cheeks rosy, but not from dizzying wine, only bitter wind. The fish were not many, the nets tangled again. The boy stood on the shore, his feet touching the water and gazing at the precision of the fishermen. All four jumped out of the boat at the same time. Their knees still in the cold water, they were guiding their boats to the shore.

They saw the boy, but none made a sound. The boats needed to be lifted, from sand to elevated safety. They rested on their side as the nets with all the fish were thrown overboard. Then without a word, the men started to pull the boats onto the wooden planks, to their platform. The boy rushed over to one of the boats to help. He was pulling with all the force he could muster. His hands were red from the ropes carving a path and splinters attacked his fingers. He groaned with the men, but his voice somehow did not fit in. When the hard work was done, one of the fisherman turned to him and asked:

“Who’s boy are ya?”
The boy stood astonished, he never was anybody’s, he roamed the world alone without much supervision.
“I’m nobody’s boy. I’m just alone.” He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket.
“Aye, alone is best” the old man murmured.
“What are you going to do with the fish?” The boy's curiosity did not wilt as he combed his hair away from his eyes when the wind blew against him.
“We sell them.”
“Sell them? For what?” The boy was puzzled by the idea of selling the fish. He had never heard of such a thing. Where he came from, there were no fish and if they appeared they were treated with respect and were made resting places.
“Ah, boy, what you asking for? We sell them is all. We are fishermen”

The old fisherman had kind eyes. The boy saw their sincerity and decided to stay around him. The men carried on with their work silently. Stools were placed in front of the boats and the nets lay there in one heap, tangled. With tools foreign to the boy, the men started to repair the net. Two took the fish in boxes towards the boathouse further a field, whilst the other two sat to give their full attention to the nets. The boy crouched and pulled his eyebrows together, surprised or confused. He saw the deformed fingers of the fishermen work on the delicate nets, sewing the broken pieces together.

“You want to catch more fish?” asked the boy.
The old man just nodded but the words failed to accompany. The boy stood up and turned towards the sea. He stood there silent till the men were finished with their work. He then helped them put their tools away, folded the net neatly into the boat and then walked them as far as the boathouse. There he bid them goodbye and returned to the shore.

The boy spent his day playing in the sand. He befriended creatures he found in little caves or lying in the grass. He wrote in the air and drew in the sand careful enough for the water not to erase with the next wave. He lay on the shore and watched the birds from below. He thought of the fishermen, wondered what they were doing in that instant. When he found nothing more to do, he hurried time to night come more swiftly. Deep sleep caught him unguarded and he only woke little before the next dawn saw the fishermen return.

By the time the men were pulling the boats into the water, the boy was there. The dawn was dark but he was excited about the fishing. He stood waiting till the men returned. He now knew what to do when the boats arrived. He hurried time and saw them return with the high noon. The men were no less broken than the day before. The fish were no more and the nets were no less tangled. The boy ran to the boat, brought the tool and started mending the net. Nobody told him what to do. He was curious still and posed the question to the old man.

“What if the fish won’t let you catch them any more?”
“We’ll starve is what will happen.” And a sigh left his chest.
“Can you make me a kite?” Asked the boy with his huge green eyes and careless hair turning to the old man.
“What you need a thing like that for?” Came the question, but the man still not looked at the boy. His hands were busy sewing the net back to one piece.
“ I want to fly.” Said the boy with the most seriousness.
“A kite can’t keep you in the air boy.” The old man shrugged the boy’s idea and focused more intently on his net.
“ But you can make one that can.” Unhindered by what the man had said, the boy stood up and demanded the kite to be made.
“You need a good strong wood, then some thin paper and strings, lots of strings.”
Before the old man could say anything else, the boy ran off. He left the net unfinished and the stool turned upside down, and ran towards the dune.

The next morning he helped the boats to sea again and then waited for the old man to return. When time was ready the men, boats, fish and nets came home. The fish were no more and the burden was no less. They helped the weary boats to the shore and allowed them to rest till the next day. The nets got untangled and the fish moved from the boats. The boy then ran to get the wood and thin paper and strings for the old man to build him a kite. He was out of breath and excited from the idea that he will be able to fly. He placed the materials in front of the man and waited for him start building. He crouched in front of the piece of wood and watched as the old man took out his pocket knife and carved a piece. Then another and another. He used the string to tie the pieces together and the boy gave everything he needed into his hands. The paper was cut to the right size and the tail of the kite carried many different shapes the man had made for the boy.

“Here it is boy.” said the man when he finished. He would have liked to colour it for the boy, but could see that nothing would have made him happier than if the kite was placed in his hands there and then.
“This is the perfect kite.” He held it and ran off towards the highest cliff.

The kite was almost as big as the boy and he could hardly control it. The wind grew joyous when it saw what to play with in the air. The boy stood on the edge of the cliff and tied the rope of the kite to his wrist. He wanted to make sure that he could not loose it. The sun was shining on the water and the grass was swayed with every breeze. The wind was gathering strength and finally lifted the boy from the ground to the air. He was flying. His feet dangled and the wind was taking him and his kite higher and higher. The old man was watching with tear filled eyes from below. He whispered, “take care my boy”. The boy laughed and waved to everyone below. He saw the fish on the road, moving to somewhere they might be still needed. He saw the old man and the sea. Time flew past him and soon he reached the stars. Each star had a boat hanging from it and he chose the one that looked the biggest. He sat in it and untied the kite from his wrist. He waited for the sun to set and the moon to rise. Then he watched from above as the kite fell below. It fell into the sea with a great big splash.

Dawn neared again. The fishermen got ready and set out in their boats to catch the fish. They set their nets out and returned with boats near sinking from the weight of the prey. The bitter faces glowed and the hands grabbed the ropes more eager. The old man sat next to his boat, mended his net and whispered, “thank you my boy”.

Would you dare?

If the next day that dawns on you, pins the question at all four corners of your existence: would you dare? If the wind carried messages of bravery toward the webs between your hands and feet: would you dare? If the ones before you had the chance, but you only the words: would you dare?

For the serpent temps many a times and those unprepared will see their blemished souls fall below into the abyss, to a burning furnace or the steaming lake of Hell. Nothing can stop this spiral process. We are forever concerned with our present, yet there is one, a more real one waiting the present we are trapped in right now. Call yourself a Christian, a Muslim, an Atheist, a Jew, a Buddhist or Shinto, Hindu or Pagan, you are just a mortal, a sinner who awaits judgement when the hour of your present draws to an end. If the ones walking before you had the secret, but you only the hope: would you dare? If freedom was just another word for love, would you dare?

When you love, you love completely. The tepid desire, just barely visible in the corner of your eye hung onto the thinnest branch of hope made you appear more eager than it sufficed. There is a comma to go with every emotion. It barricades itself neatly between the lines so the cursor can never get to it completely. There is freedom in the want for more. If the one you can almost touch turned and ignored the facts of life ruthlessly: would you dare? If the dream slowly died in your arms: would you dare?

The chanting increased and the crowd murmured slogans for a brave new world to appear. The Son then took all the fault and blame and saved those who were too weak to speak from eternal doom. Praise is what we all deserve and praise is what should never be taken out of context for the fear of gluttony. Then a melody arrives, trickled down from Paradise into the ears of those who have the ability to transcript them into audible bites for the rest of us to decipher. Sense and senseless appear tangled in the wardrobe mirror. A newborn child pops its head around. If the world stopped making sense at all: would you dare? If you knew the only one who can save you disappeared: would you dare?

If you knew you were never going to care: could you at least dare?

Furious Freedom

The chilling fear.
A silent whimper.
One October dream.
Metal clashing with concrete.
Flesh drowned in red glory.
Words and hope entwined.
A deep desire.
The sincere want.
Undeniable courage.
Bravery beyond measure.

To stay.
To love.

Red.
White.
Green.
Battlefields on streets.
Children with guns.
Emotions running along.
The future a day old.
A past haunting.
The endless reverie.
One enduring belief.

To stay.
To fight.

Chest meets a bullet.
Blood dries the cobble.
Leaves cover the battle.
Tanks flatten the hope.
One scream.
The immense pain.
Freedom’s here.
Freedom’s gone.
Iron invites.
Ropes dangle.

To stay.
To leave.

Pages torn.
History deleted.
Lies embraced.
Ideals invented.
People erased.
Heroes created.
Fear paralysing.
Helplessness overpowering.
Doubts lurking.
The truth dying.

To feel.
To be.

Faces unchanged.
Names proudly paraded.
Five decades ever embedded.
Numbers fabricated.
One honest desire.
Bullets to not have been in vain.
Lives to not have been in vain.

Freedom to not have been in vain.

A year on…

I wish I could whisper to someone words of utter confusion. I wish they heard me and thought nothing of my silly request. I wish to tell them that I just want to stand here for a minute, still, silent and that I want them to just stand here with me. Could things change? Could they start spinning in some other direction? Away from all the craziness that I am forced to make peace with…

The chilling cold has arrived. The morning allows itself to be engrossed by its overwhelming power. My cheeks arrive inside the building with bite marks from the frosty wind. My hands are curled up in my jacket pocket and refuse to leave the warmth; the elbows can do the job for once. Where the river runs, the morning misty breeze can unguarded and unsupervised run up and down, flip around bridges, roll around the rusty bars of boats, catch the untangled clean hair of those walking over the water and escape towards the unseen. The leaves cover the streets and not even the trams can shelter the shivering bones of the night. The Sun, unquestionable, has less and less will to glimpse over to our side. Its attention’s been grabbed by something more shimmering and more forgiving than things here. But my route’s been planned. I veer off it for nobody’s plea. Come warm, come cold: I am walking silently with Bartók.

I started writing this blog a year ago. I took arms in the hope that by capturing a piece of the virtual world I would be able to make more people see me. Even if I have failed at this goal miserably, I see nothing but success. This blog has documented my year here in Budapest. I used it to convey messages of my happiness, tales of my sorrow, journeys of my soul. Ultimately I am at the same place I was a year ago, but somehow could not be further. Then I was excited and grateful for the chances I had in life. Now I am unfulfilled and bitter at my own failures. My success then, now translates into frustration. Time then seemed limitless, now it parades itself in front of me as an ever-elusive hallucination. I never felt like I had the world at my feet, but a year ago, I was very pleased with what I had achieved. Now I feel like I’m trying to walk up an escalator that’s adamant in going down.

The heart of the forest lives without light. Trees grow tall and cover the sun’s ray from the blanket of fallen leaves that lie untouched at their feet. The cemetery of broken dream and ideas never shake the nonchalant trees. They grow upwards and never heed to the ones below. The lightless carpet is soft and vulnerable. Humans tread on invisible desires of the leaves that have lost the will to live. Dark forever wants to take over forests or hearts or lives or innocent dreams. There are warrior angels on both sides; they fight a deadly war, which ends in leaves and men falling alike. Am I supposed to understand this? To make sense of the violence within and the violence out there? The trees have a firm grip and show one sole desire: to be close to the light. The angelic powers wage a war, a war that is acted out by men who feel too close to the Light. And I silently breathe the air and capture the twinkling of the light in the heart of the forest where the fallen leaves smile as I tread my burdensome life.

I had set myself a deadline: a deadline to leave and a deadline to create. I had a year to accomplish both. Now I stand in shame for I have done neither. I am still just standing here and my hands are still empty. I have not had the power to turn away and I have not had the chance to walk away. Walking in circles or walking towards something can sometimes be the same. I hope that time will yet again side with me and the angels will take a break from their heavenly fight to give me guidance and courage to accomplish all that I once set out. But the self is lost and found simultaneously. How could I have the strength when he asks the question what will happen to me if you leave? With tears in my eyes I return to the place where my soul is torn between what I have and what I want. Staying is an option. Going is an option. Writing is an option. Staying silent is an option.

I let the wind play with my hair and for the rest of the day forget about the evils of the present and only let myself be tortured by vultures when night descends. I don’t need to face the truth until it gets late enough for the dark to call up its army and order an attack on the forces behind me. Time watches my eternal battle from the sidelines and recites verses from ancient Greek mythology, sniggering at the thought that no matter how much I may wound the other, in the end we’re only hurting ourselves.

I’m buying books again

A year ago I moved to Budapest and I stopped buying books: a reason I cannot confidently account. I rationalised by maintaining a frame of mind that my posting here in Hungary will be so temporary that my books need not be transported from Switzerland where they are –still- docking after having arrived on mainland Europe. I convinced myself that there would be absolutely no sense in buying bulky and heavy, space consuming products either that ultimately end up on a shelf touched only every once in a while. I wished for my stay here to have ended by now, that was the initial plan. A year, I’ll move back here for a year, is what I had thought to myself. Books therefore need not follow me. Books, the few I had taken here will last me till I leave.

Without books, my ideas were choking and my hand was shaking every time I sat down to write. Nothing was what wanted to surface. This scared me and left me trying less and less. I wrote seldom and what I did write, I was not happy with. A writer – as ill equipped as I am and barely a writer -cannot afford to stop reading because the experiences, the vocabulary, the ideas that I have formed in my head all need guidance and adding to. The only way to better myself is to read the mastery of those before me who truly possess the talent, the gift of creation. This is my one chance at ever being good at what I enjoy the most. If I don’t learn from the literary masters of this craft, I will never be good enough; my writings will never be good enough. But the laziness, the comfort of oblivion, the ardent desire for nothing to change, left me unmoved and uninterested in another effort to bring myself to be a better writer. The lack of motivation sparks glaciers to melt and snow to rumble like an avalanche down the slopes and drives the weak soul into a deeper and deeper state of nihilism. I turned from my books, left them waiting to be picked up for a few minutes at the end of the day. I did not dedicate time or energy or sincerity to their words. I went as far as reading pulp fiction, just to pass the time. For me – the archetype cultural snob- to let anything but classic or modern literary fiction to pass through my hands is a denouncing of the ideals I was raised to live with. There were days when I had wished I were still working in the Chelsea Cinema and had all the time in the world to read. Now I’m chained to an office where even if time undresses itself and lies naked before me, I cannot but pass on the offer and get back to wasting the opportunity with ultimately fruitless tasks that my office job requires. My books have to take what I can give: lonely hours at the end of the day.

A year has passed without stimuli for my creative channels. Today I had to break the cycle and gave in to the sweet lure of those printed pages. When I buy books, it’s the sign that I have made my peace with my situation. Buying books reveals my hunger for knowledge and for impulses that I would never get otherwise. I feel like I’ve come home to my books and that I can finally muster up the courage to take my own words and my own ideas and make a story for everyone to read. But whilst I read, I am able to postpone the daunting task set before me so that this little talent - sprinkled on me by grace and I am convinced mistake - would not be wasted any longer. First I need to learn from the great masters and then I can imitate or fabricate or learn to create an accord of the imaginative and the pages already visited. This is a hopeful time and a lustrous time when I finally let myself be swept away by the great works, when I no longer wish to hide away from the curious eyes of the world, when my sole wish is to feed off the genius of writers before me.

I’m buying books again and it’s funny how nothing really ever changes. How life watches us as we run laps around the same circuit time and time again. How the characters of a Dostoevsky novel appear suddenly in any other work of fiction we hold in our hands. How what we’re destined to do never leaves the unconscious and works fervently to surface each and every minute. Even if you turn your back, those books keep coming back.

The Water

There is something mystical and enchanting about the water. Whether it is sky blue and crystal clear or burdened by the filth of the many lands it crosses, whether it moves through mountains and planes to reach the wide open, or it stays tranquil answering only to the changing of the moon: it is beautiful. Once the water captures you, there is no way to escape.

The water I have is the Danube and I stay untouched by the fact that it’s brown and grey and its stench and that it twirls the grime of ten countries. It’s our river; it has been my most loyal companion for the past year. In the morning I cross it from Pest to Buda and each day I embark on the Petőfi Bridge in the hope that I will be able to smell the water. The fish, the oil stains, the debris, the many secrets: the smell of life as carried from the Black Forest. Vienna says “hi”, Bratislava says “hello”, Budapest welcomes you on this fine morning and you’ll find Belgrade in much of its beauty as yesterday. The Danube gently washes the backs of great lands, great cities.

My river is patient and forgiving. I am much in love with this city that it separates in two. Everything that I go through, the river knows about. The Danube is mine, the gentlest companion in this crudely harsh world. When everyone is out to slash my skin open, the water comes and heals all the wounds of sorrow. Without ever touching it, my hand is firmly held by the whirls and the current that forces me to hang on. I sometimes feel like I’m slow dancing in a burning room. The river leads me down alleyways that we create for ourselves. Right there and then, it will cut a path for me, tear it out from the concrete just so I can see the humbling power. I place my face on its glittering back and hear it hum a gorgeous melody. The sun warms the surface, the fish jump in their joy of living; the seagulls fly far for there are no remains for them to feast on. The river like a cat purrs, begs for every passer by to put their hands in the midst of its glory. “Let me show you my true self”, it begs for them to hear its voice. It is most happy when the many boats rub against its tired back. When the waves giggle as they ride up and down the weary spine. Then the river can show the grace and the luminous pride as it hurries down to its magnificent sea.

Night gently covers every corner of the city and pulls its blanket of stars over the Danube. I stand motionless on the Szabadság Bridge and try to count the colours the river plays with. The green and grey turn black and the water reflects the many lights that on its banks alight. Like a careless child the Danube throws the flickering lights up and down its back. The waves carry it from shore to shore, then back to the middle and I see it putting on a show for those who care to wander out when the dark threatens with its stay. But how would a giant like this river, be held back by the moon taking over from the sun? Night is when it safeguards the welfare of its people. Night is when it rocks the docking boats to sleep. Night is when the light comes out to play and night is when the stars descend in a paper boat to hold a race on the quiet river. Night is when nobody can see, when the river can carry itself humbly to its magnificent sea.

No other water has been as close to me as the Duna. The Oceano Atlântico at Guincho was wild and untameable, roaring from the anger and the shackles it wanted to rid. The Thames was much too arrogant to take notice of the inhabitants camping on its banks. The Vlatva was silent and tremblingly too shy to ever capture my heart. I visit the Lac de Neuchâtel from time to time and sadly it just stays foreign to me.

The Danube has my heart and I will gladly give it my soul. I will smile as I walk above it tomorrow morning. I will stay true and when I take my heart and give it to someone else, I will show the river that just because I love another, I never stopped loving you.

My Dear Love

My Dear Love,

Where it went wrong, I know not. We found ourselves on different continents, unable to cross. We tried until we could, until we saw reason and then threw the attempt at the wind and set it free to sail around the world. We bowed our heads and crying turned away, embarked on a path that lead away. The body turned, but the heart stayed longing, sad and bruised. The pain descended and has refused to leave ever since. Not always apparent but it is making its omnipresence felt, time and time again. How could I forget?

Time is relative and malicious, tainting memories that stay untouched for prolonged periods. This is why my dear one, I cannot trust my own memory when it comes to you. I have no memory of you but find a chest filled with your sweet presence. I do not know you, yet I whisper my secrets only to you. I am yet to meet you, yet you already know my everything. No matter how close or far you are, or what those terms mean, the bond should never be allowed to break. The bond should never have been allowed to break. Now you blush for you’ve sinned many a times. And I stay strong and loving and turn a blind eye to all you’ve done before you got to know me. I humbly place my soul on a platter for you to take. I am hungry for more.

I miss you. The pain is vivid and alive. If I knew you, I’d miss you more, or I might have already vanished from the excruciating pain your parting is causing. I cannot cope with the open wound on my heart. Every time it tries to heal itself and mend the gasping hole, you come and rip it open, tear it apart, crush the little vessels carrying the fresh blood to make it whole. I cry, in the dead of night, a desperate cry for you. You never hear, you never heard, you never answer. Your eyes smile on someone else, oblivious to my existence and the fact that you’re yet to meet the one who cringes for you, alone, in the solitude of nothing else but pain. Once you’ve walked away, left me to die of hunger for you and now you look back but flinch at my sight. The pain is eating me up alive so I plan to set my soul free, to wander unrestrained the world looking for you. Will you sing till my wandering soul is found?

Where is the place you and I can be in each other’s arms? Is there a haven waiting for us? I live on streets you know nothing of. You might place your steps in mine, day after day. I have not seen where you are, you do not know where I am. I am in a place that I have fallen in love with, yet hate my place in it. I twist and turn around, I loath to see my reflection but love to stare at the water. The sight is sometimes too much to bear. You’d rather be anywhere but where you are now. You’d rather watch the stars with me, standing on the riverbank at night when neither of us can see the reflection glittering in the water. You’d rather hold my hand on the silent street. You’d rather walk freely behind me. You’d rather be a shadow that can never tame me. You’d rather love me than to live without me.

Even if the pain never goes away, I will keep your memory safe with me. If I never notice you, I want you to know that I would give my all to have you. Even if you never remember, I will never forget. Stay sweet my dear unknown, first and worst love.

I think I’ll call it love…

Those of you who take the time and effort to read my blogs regularly, you are probably aware of the underlying themes that entwine most of the pieces published here. When they’re not about a film that inspired me or a social commentary I feel compelled to unleash upon the masses, or a simple fact of life like a birthday passing or the seasons changing, these writings show the real me. I may not tell much in spoken word, but when it comes to my friends: these black formations, I let them open me up and I let them carry the sincerity onto the page because I know they will never mock me and they will shield the blinding lights from ever finding my secrets.

I write a lot about the very basic and quintessential rules of life that I aim to grapple in vain, time and time again. Time a friend and a foe simultaneously. I write about the passing of time and the bizarreness of the concept of time and what it means in relation to my mortal existence. Naturally when time manifests its very visible existence on this earth in the form of physical transformations of plants, rivers, skies and people, I react to that. I grow almost scared and in the frighteningly honest moment I would write about the simplest human emotion. Time passing in the process becomes almost irrelevant.

The idea of an apparent paralysis of the creative vessels also often poses as a central ornament to my writings. Because I want and I cannot. There will be days when the words effortlessly fly out of me and reach the page much too careless and easy. There will be many more days when the words, to spite me, never leave my head. They lock themselves in a grid, chained at every single angle and all I can hear is them laughing at my efforts to release them. They’re bound and they seldom obey me.

There is also the theme of love that creeps in from all corners of the imagination. It stands in front of me like the deadliest trap, the most enchanting, luring, masqueraded, puzzling, shiny medal that I must never have. That I must never tame. That I must forever live without. And it makes me go crazy for it and it makes me crave it and at the same time I wish to discard it at any given chance. I dance a sacred dance around it, to mislead mostly myself, and those around me who know better than to expect me to live without.

The single most heart-shattering discovery that I have made in my short time among the human race is that love is never enough. Regardless of my willingness to open myself up, to allow a deep cut to salvage my skin, to break the flesh, to splinter the bones and reach my heart and bring it to surface, regardless of my most vivid desire to take my beating heart, this bundle of muscle and place it in the bare hands of the one I love: even that can never be enough. Love, even if objectified, cannot alone cope with the despairing human character. I stand in awe of this unbearable discovery and hold my head in astonishment that something that is so precious can have so little power. Why? Why, when if I had the know-how, I would give more than my all just to restore my long lost faith in love? The truth: love is never enough. No matter how choking the passion is. No matter how it boils over us, how it spits its fireballs over our heads: with time, love becomes paralysed.

The web-like existence of these themes connect my head with my heart with my hand. But my all can be dislodged with one unpredictable wiggle of time, with one breeze of love and with one thought of paralysis. The enigma remains and I am left to try to better myself through the only tool I know I may have. I lean on everything I have and everything I know so I am able to go on. So I am able to bear the consequences of a fruitless talent, of a loveless life, of a time tight present.

And they feed you lies…

If there could be a world without politics, I believe we would all be happier people. My only wish and desire is to make this blog about me. To write about the feelings I have and to use it as a source of outlet for all that’s troubling my little heart. Instead I have to waste time and energy and emotion on politics because it’s just more than infuriating what is going on. Instead of worrying about not being satisfied with the place I am right now in my life, with the job I have, with the friends I have, with the goals I have – or lack -, I feel compelled to write about the wretchedness of politicians’ morale. And for this, I hate them even more than I originally did.

We are nearing the 50th anniversary of the 1956 revolution and I think that a new revolution is in order. Then people rose against the communists, now we must rise against the corruption, the deception, the lies, the lies, the lies. We must rise against the people we chose because they feed us lies. In this case, we have to take collective blame, because a nation chooses its leaders and not individuals. This sorry excuse for a man that is leading my little country is surely a reincarnation of devil itself, but I am more angry at my fellow countrymen and women and pensioners mostly, who have elected this clown for a prime minister. Well let them pay the extra tax, let them think he is an angel for telling us he won the election by lying, let them think he is a reformed man and let them think that they chose right: let them be crushed under the burdens of this angel’s measures and then, they might see.

The city I live in is one of the most beautiful cities I have seen. I love its streets and its hills and its river and all the colours and all the history that is trapped in every corner. I walk amongst its walls and I see how much they have withstood. I see that the buildings are marred with bullet wounds, but they are still standing. I see that bridges have lost their balance once, but now they’re standing again. I see that the trees have lost their leaves many a times, but they are in bloom again. But the buildings and the streets and the bridges and the walls and the trees cannot cope with evil that is rising from within. Bullets, bombs, permanent pens they can cope with, they can tolerate and survive, but the black that is tucking at them from below will see them crumble before time. Corruption and utter disrespect for the citizens will see this nation crumble before time. This nation that has held its front against the sweeping armies of Gengshis Khan, against the Ottoman invaders, against the Habsburgs, against the Communists, against the alien ideas of any army wanting to occupy. We, the Magyars, are still here, have been here since 896 and now it looks like one of our own is intent on bringing us down and after all the resistance and fighting, we’ve grown tired and it looks like we’ll let him beat us.

I demand respect as a citizen of Hungary. I demand respect from the person we chose to represent us. I demand change. I will stand with the crowds gathered outside the parliament on Thursday and I will demand this hellish nightmare of a leader to be executed publicly in his powers as a prime minister. We deserve a better leader.

Japan

Despair. Mostly what I feel is despair. Not because I have been to a place as challenging and new as I have just seen, but because I never left my reality. Moving physically thousands of miles away for a specific period of time can never be an answer to the questions left behind. So I travel, I see, I hope that I learn and then I arrive back at where the problems stem from: myself. This concentric nature of life makes me wonder why there are oceans and mountains between us. Why there is cold and hot, wet and dry, light and dark, when ultimately it comes down to the self.

The self is what gets lost the easiest. People everywhere. People crammed into commuter trains, metros. People pushing each other at stations, at temples and shrines. There is too much eagerness or there is little awareness of the other. Everyone with their own agenda, they are pushing just to get through, just to discover that the self can never really be found. Instead of a dialogue they engage in worshiping Luck. Luck Be A Lady Tonight. Instead of words they use actions. Instead of a smile, they use a bow. They coexist with a force so mighty it can wipe them off the face of the planet. One single act of nature can send them back to ashes and dust. But the thrill of the ride, the thrill of life keeps them building higher and higher, living faster and faster, disregarding anything that may venture to alter their paths. Japan.

The Japan that showed herself was a land of much contrast. She was closing in on the one side and she was opening up on the other. There were fields of green much greener than I had ever seen. There were avenues of colours that kept me fascinated and amazed, mystified by the power light has. The concrete stole my heart and I vowed to once return and love Tokyo with all of me. The mountains with beautiful colours, the steaming villages smelling of sulphur: they were all entrapping. One tunnel after the other. One onsen after the other. One tree after the other. One house after the other. One person after the other. Who can keep count?

Every place told a story. Mostly it was of springtime, cherry blossoms or festivals with unimaginable colours. Every place had a smile and behind the smile, just barely visible, was the saddened look of hardship and misdemeanour. She had remembered a drawing in her father’s book of hell. It had three colours: red, black and brown. Then she saw the picture come alive. Hiroshima had three colours: red, black and brown. Time stood still at 8.15 and black rain began to wash down the memory of every perished soul. Torture is light compared to what was unleashed on that day…

The particulars of Japan you can read in a book. The feeling: you can never describe. If I had better tools, if I was able to tame these words more, then I could record all that I felt. I hope that what I had seen gets engraved and stored somewhere in an unexpected place and when I least feel the need to rely on it, it will rush to my aid.

It’s for times like these you learn to live again. It’s for friends like him you learn to love again.

An Amalgam of Ideas

Beautiful. Whether it is words accompanied by melody, or pictures brought alive by light or simply the green in the summer plants’ leaves, they all remind me that there’s maybe more. More than just the mundane, the expected and the required. Mostly I feel that the generous and undeserving blessings I’ve had were more than I could handle. In the steady heat of summer, I think about the future a lot. I think about love a lot. I try to think about where I could fit in. And then relief.

I never feel one ounce less lost with each day passing by. Instead of going forward, I’m hovering. I can’t tell whether I’m happy or not. The stagnant nature of my present scares me. But more than scares me it frightens the life out of me. I take trips to far away places hoping that seeing something new will shake me. Hoping that the experience will form something new in me. Constantly I dread the possibility that all of me is in vain.

All my life, change came about as a result of geographical relocation. This is all I know of change. I think, I still think, that the only way to sway myself from the present towards something better is if I change location. But the truth may be hiding somewhere else. Nobody has ever taught me that you can change your situation without placing it thousands of miles away. But I have no proof. Every time I moved, things changed and so I want to move so my things can again change.

I have all I need. I have all I want. Everything in my life is easy. I feel unfulfilled. I feel unloved. I feel lonely. Friends fire words at me that hurt more than any Israeli bullet heading towards my shelter could. Love, that I don’t need, evades me and leaves all my heartstrings broken. So sitting on top of my all, everything that I could want and need, I weep. I have unwhipsered desires, secrets to even myself, yearnings that words can never enslave and chain to the page. I will not allow the light to mock my hidden parts, I will not allow another soul to torture what is sacred inside.

When it’s gloomy, it gets really dark. I miss you, whoever you are.

Dan's Words

So you wake up one morning and nothing is pouring out of you except manic free writing and feelings of confusion like rain. Delving into the deeper nature of verbal jazz and arriving at the door with a handful of fluff to offer your hosts, and they kick you out, saying "get back to your houses until you can learn to write like Burroughs and make it WORK." So you shove off towards that known horizon, realizing the plan was only ever in the back of your head and maybe written on the back of your hand, if you were feeling responsible that day, but never really realized. You do not truly Know that horizon, only imagine it constantly and speak of it. You lost the touch of divine inspiration and out of you now flows foolish self-contemplation, which proves useless to your listeners. So instead you tune into A Love Supreme and try to lyricize your own narcissistic eternal internal ballad in a way more easily identified with for those who prefer the cynical yet hopeful tongue-in-cheek method of communicating. And here it is.

I’ve borrowed these lines above from someone who once captured the vanity and paralysis of creation at its most vulnerable. A perfect picture of a moment, a photograph of a situation existing only where there is a need for fulfillment. The heart, the head and the hand working in unparalleled symphony just to brush the feeling with a stroke on the canvas. And there I laid unable to move, for he said everything I am feeling right now. He had words to help him live through the rough. I’ve always imagined I had words to help me cope with his absence. Even on a foggy day, when he saw no direction and was crying out for help, he used words to channel all his excess energies from bad to good. I’ve borrowed these lines above from someone whose ghost I’m getting ever closer to taming.

I have a rose. I have a rosebud. I’m loving it and feeding it and watching it grow. It’s growing tall, it’s growing beautiful. In my spiraling soul mutilation that I carry out as a ritual from time to time with the aid of my past love, I manage to entwine objects and cities and feelings and words and thoughts with only him. Offering nothing exclusive, the rose becomes just an object of memory. The symbolic nature of everything that surrounds me sometimes burdens the wings of my imagination, but I feel I need to be fuelled by the things gone through me so there’s meaning, at least for me. The rose was I. The Rose was the Little Prince’s. The story was ours and the book landed with him. So the fact that I now nurture a rose, that I have a rosebud who is only mine and who will bloom only for me, is greatly symbolic in me facing the ghost that he is, that his love is.

"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."

"It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . ."

"I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

This is more of a burden than a sweet memory. I long to shed the things that lock his name forever in my memory. I hope my rose will help me. I hope he at least suspects that I do feel and will forever feel responsible, that feeling responsible can be nothing else than feeling love. But I’m free and have for a long time been walking away and that makes me proud of me and of my rose and of my memories and of my love for him.

"Good morning," said the roses.

The little prince gazed at them. They all looked like his flower.

"Who are you?" he demanded, thunderstruck.

"We are roses," the roses said.

And he was overcome with sadness. His flower had told him that she was the only one of her kind in all the universe. And here were five thousand of them, all alike, in one single garden!

Do You Remember?

Moz and I were on our mini holiday in January 2002 visiting London. Not only the prospect of spending a few days together was exciting, but more so the fact that at the end of that trip I was going to see my biggest star perform live: Jewel. We saw what we had to and on a Saturday we went to Notting Hill. It was a Saturday because we were at the Portobello Road Market. Everything was new and busy; it was quaint – though I most distinctly despise to use this word to describe anything of significance or value-. Somehow it sparkled. Emma, Kate, Bruno, Moz and I were wandering the streets and suddenly the sky turned purple and we were caught in a hailstorm. When the inexplicable phenomenon subsided and our excitements wore off we realised that Kate’s bag had been robbed of her most important possessions. We searched for a police station and spent another hour sitting there, filing a report. My phone rang: “Hi mom! We’re at a police station in Notting Hill. Kate’s stuff’s been stolen.” – but my enthusiasm didn’t wear off. Another unfortunate lady before us was trying to find sympathy: there are pickpockets everywhere. Emma made sandwiches and we had them in the waiting room of the police station. Those were the best egg mayonnaise sandwiches I’ve ever had in my life.

It was around 2 am; it must have been a weekend because I was up as well. On weekdays when I pretended to be an important BBC employee I was in bed sooner. It was one of those warm early summer nights when the balcony door was open and Babs, Bruno and I were having a world changing conversation. Diego was taking a shower. He liked to not only listen to music, but sing along as well. He knew little of the lyrics, so Madonna’s “like a prayer” sounded something like this: “I’ll take you there………..I’ll be there………take you there” with continuous humming in the middle. That night he was listening to Capital FM full blast to drown out the sounds of the water splashing. The doorbell rang. A furious neighbour who wanted to sleep at 2 am came complaining. Bruno opened the door: “It’s not me. Calm down, I’ll take care of it”. Lots of shouting till Diego heard we wanted him to turn off the music. The neighbour probably never forgave.

There is video documentation of this event. My 19th and Moz’s 18th birthday party, April 2001. My house in Birre, Cascais, Portugal. We were young and my parents were away. After about 5 tequilas and when most people went home, the champagne appeared. Moz, Bea, Catherine, Bruno, Andy, Taki, Miguel and I. I’m sure it was one of the boys who thought of the great idea to not drink the champagne, but shake it, sprinkle it and shower each other with it. We were soaking and were having the time of our lives. Running around on my porch, sticking of the sweet cheap champagne that we bought that day at Jumbo. There was a lot of screaming and a lot of complaining mostly from Moz, but Andy got his share as well. Then came the whipped cream: chantilly. How that got started had nothing to do with me. I was just concerned that the whole house will be covered in it and I’d have to clean up the mess. In the end, all out of breath, laughing and sticking and stinking from alcohol, sugar, cream and sweat we started munching away on some crackers in the kitchen. Bea was drunk because she was hugging everyone. Catherine was traumatised by Mico attacking her. Moz fell asleep. Bruno never ceased to be funny. Miguel was filming all along. Andy had cream in his hair and decided from then on to use that as gel. I was just happy and silly and young.

Summer of 2003: an amazing festival in Kapolcs, a tiny little village in Hungary. The Valley of Arts. Dió, Feri and I headed out there to enjoy the arts and to enjoy each other’s company. After getting up early, travelling by train - which was packed by like minded young people all heading down for the opening of the festival like us - we arrived at the city of Veszprém to change to a bus going to Kapolcs. The bus was full and it was hot. We were carrying bags, food, tent, all the supplies needed for a week. Finally we got there. Finally we got to the garden we were going to camp in. We were tired and sweaty. Then came the realisation that none of us had any idea how to set up the tent. It was a borrowed tent – we’re not great campers. We looked baffled as to what to do with the wires and knots and nails and ropes. It was the most fun I’ve had, setting up that tent. Photos record the triumphant looks on our faces afterwards: yes we did it! Then lots of little adventures awaited us those coming few days, like brushing my teeth at a street water pump and stirring up the silence with my electric toothbrush. Like the torrential rain that left our shoes and our everything soaking wet. Like the endless fun we had and still draw from as friends. The deep friendship that I share with those two people.

A Saturday, we spent the whole day together: Diego, Nadia and I. It was just one of those days that started with a coffee in Coffee Republic. I arrived with my newly bought books, among them F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”. Great friends, great coffee, great conversation. We were deciding whether Nadia should go to New York or Boston for her PhD. I was an advocate for New York, solely for the merits of the city, not because I know anything about the Rockefeller Center. Diego was pushing for the “red brick” university. For a while we wondered the streets of Marylebone and then decided to go back to Nadia’s place. We ordered pizza – Diego had his with mayonnaise and swore by it. We watched a movie “sidewalks of new york”, with no intention to sway Nadia. Our trio is a great one. A few months later we went to Brussels to stay at Nadia’s parents’ house. Then we went off in different directions: Nadia ended up in Boston, Diego stayed in London, and I came to Budapest.

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Conversation in Heaven

I often wondered when you’d get here: would I have to wait long or would the time pass quicker than I ever knew it could. I started counting the days so that I would have some sense of time. Before I knew it, I was caught up in seeing everyone who greeted me with the same question as I’m greeting you now. What took you so long?

There were things I needed to take care of. I had to leave knowing everything would be arranged. I needed time to make sure that there were no more loose ends. My life could never have a loose end.

Still I’ve been waiting and I have wanted to tell you so much. There have been things happening up here that no amount of shouting can make the ones down there listen. I was shouting to you a lot, but you never seemed to hear. I watched you move your life from one safe place to the other, without so much as help from anyone else. You appeared strong, but I saw underneath. Here, there’s nothing but crude honesty. Here the best tool you have is sincerity because nothing that was down there can ever matter here.

I’m still new to everything you’re telling me. I will need your help. Down there I would never have been able to ask for your help. Up here it seems natural. I arrived and there were tears streaming down my face as I saw my dear son. My only son, my love. He smiled and opened his arms, wide, he was screaming it’s so good you’re finally here. I never knew such love. I never saw myself cry. Just now.

You finally become who you would have been if times weren’t so hard down there when you lived. Here there’s no fear and there’s no pain. This is love and happiness at its purest and soon you will forget what it was like to live down there. My dear sister, you will see that nothing compares to being here.

I’ve missed you the most. I never told you, but I love you dearly. I watched you over the years, living next to me, cooking and cleaning, coming and leaving and then silently disappearing. I loved your daughter like my own, but I could never show it. I never cried and I never showed love and that left me empty and unwholesome, yearning for simply, a touch. I held my son as he slipped away from me to come here. I held my husband as he vanished from me to come here. After I had no one else to hold, I started making plans to come here too.

Your son and husband have been waiting a long time to see you. We often sit together and reminisce about times spent down there. They miss your cooking and the soft touch of your weary hands that took care of them. In hours of need, you were always there, without a word, you held them. Now they want to take care of you. Their bodies are free of disease and their hearts are pure, just like yours or mine.

What about our mother?

You’ll see her, there’s time. You have to get to know her all over again. She’s not the woman who raised us. She’s not the bitter and broken woman who got beaten by frustration. She’s a free woman. She is free of the burden of six children. She is free of the burden of a husband. She walks around all day long and comes to see her children, and we talk and laugh and tell each other secrets that we never knew we had. She embroiders all of Heaven’s tablecloths and she smiles and sings all the time.

The pain is gone from my fingers. The pain of lifting heavy pots and pans as a little girl.

There is no pain here.

The swelling’s gone from my arms and legs.

There is no pain here.

Your heart is silent.

My dear sister, there is peace here.

I'm just a weary pilgrim trying to find what feels like home

The city’s become familiar. Summer’s how I always knew it. The stuffy nights, the evenings spent sipping cocktails and liquors of all kinds, talking about the future and recapping the past. Friends whom I’ve not seen for months, streets that I’ve not walked on for months. The silky air wrapped itself around my body and held me tight, wishing that I’d never leave again. But without much struggle, I always managed to set myself free from her grip. After the long and sweaty days, the dense nights, I vanished into another realm and left this lovely city alone. I imprinted my being onto the streets and buildings but never allowed myself to be captured. The Danube whispered, the squares and parks yearned, the monuments of greatness murmured and yet I listened not to them, but to the call of a land far away that was home. They all knew that I would not return until the quenching heat descended on this magnificent capital again. Patiently they all waited, until one day I turned up in the middle of the autumn change. I let seasons come and go and now summer’s arrived and it’s unveiling a city before my eyes that I only know too well.

When the city so graciously unmasks itself before me, my only wish is to share it with you. So that you could see the river glittering gently as it travels down towards the warm sea. So that you could see the sun setting behind the hills of Buda on an evening when it’s pouring down with silky rain. So that you could see the trees and flowers proudly parading their colours around. Where are you? Honesty is the best weapon I have and this is the only forum in which I am brave enough to show my weakest part. Here I feel shielded from the incredible harshness of reality. Here everyone that never reads can never laugh.

Will you come and knock on my door, like you did all those years ago? Will you come and find me amongst the haze and the hay like you did all those years ago? For how could you, when you don’t even know me. You’re walking down streets that I’ve never walked on. You’re holding the hands of girls that you never intended to love. But I dream of you. I dream of belonging to you one day. One day when our paths cross finally and my eyes will catch yours and we will forever be in love. Even if now we’re roaming the world oblivious to each others’ existence, I know that one day, all that was unimportant will suddenly gain significance. Then I will read the poems you had made for me. Then I will listen to the songs you had sung for me. Then you will read the pages I had written for you. And once I love you completely and you love me completely all that’s around us will start to make sense. Life’s little glories will seem worthwhile and the glimmering sunshine will bring smiles onto our faces as we’re watching the streaming river tumble downwards to the warm warm sea.

My angel, you will hold me and whisper gently “stay”.

Random notes on the happenings of this week

FIX YOU. If asked which pop group I disliked the most, those who know me well know that I will say: coldplay. And they will also know that apart from some animated gibberish about how they’re irritating because of their sense of fashion, their lack of tension in their music and the fact that they’re Anglo Saxon, I would not be able to coherently reason my choice of dislike. But the seed of the dislike was planted and now out of some silly stubbornness, I am unable to appear more open to the talents of coldpaly’s band members. The coming lines therefore can seem like sacrilege or the denouncing of my beliefs all in one.
There is one coldplay song that has got me. Today was not the first time I’ve heard it, but it was the first time I really heard it. The song was lying low in my brain somewhere. It was waiting for the right time to surface. All day long I was humming “the lights will guide you home”. I wasn’t even sure what the words meant or if they bore any significance, but I hummed and wrote the words on a post it and stuck it on my desk to remember. All of a sudden upon hearing the song again, I got it. I finally could understand and appreciate the tenderness of this soul ripping song. I understood the willingness of it to show the soul as a dartboard for all you cynics to take a shot at. I understood the amazing richness of emotion that surfaced with a simple little line. This emotion and sincerity, the fragile truth, the confessed weakness, the broken spirit, they’re all coming alive with one line. The lights will guide you home. Because home is what we all crave and home is what most of us never have. Home that is a haven. Home that is another human being with compassion and love. Home that IS love. Home where everyone is safe. Home that is a shelter from the evil because this world is not a nice place. The twinkling lights will always be there and they will guide you home; all you have to do is follow them. Just start walking and once you’ve gained momentum, the tears will dry on your cheeks and you will see, you will ultimately see, you will arrive and be a part of: a home. The lights will guide you home…

FORCA. The two things I struggle with the most are love and home. Maybe there is only one love for everyone. Maybe the real love is that person who saw to your core. Maybe it’s that person who sees your all, who loves your dark and who will always be your home. Because love is so abstract in my life, home can only be abstract as well. But if home is peace, then I know home. If home is love, then I know love. I know love because there’s been a person in my life who has taught me all I know, who has shown me all I see, and who has made me understand the simplicity of home and love and peace. My mom. To her, I owe everything: to her sensitivity and her sincere words. She says: “you’re my one success” and with an air of ease she proceeds to make the world bend backwards just for her. She resurrects broken down ideas and makes crutches for people who grew tired of life's scars. Her tenderness I was never able to imitate. I say with the most love: forca. If there was a point where you thought turning back was your only option, that point’s long gone. We’re all walking next to you, just an arms length away. Reach out and we’ll be there. We’re your safety net..we’re your lights that will guide you home. And teach me of honest things. Teach me to be better. Teach me to love more those who hurt me. Teach me to never be afraid. Teach me to have the love in my eyes like you. Teach me all you know so one day I can see the light that will guide me home.

I almost forgot

I almost didn’t remember what it was all about. For a moment, I seemed to have lost the focus of my vision. Only for a split second, I was looking elsewhere and almost didn’t remember what it was that I was supposed to feel. I thought myself lost and rekindled with the newfound meaning, the newly discovered truth that I need to hang onto to keep myself sane. I realised that whilst I was resting my eyes on pastures more green, I was loosing sight of what I had built for myself. I looked into the distant horizon and was almost screaming from the uncertainty of a winding road ahead of me. I lost the one thing that I had made sure stayed with me for stability. That dream, that idea, that nurturing thought of a future so securely fastened to unreality.

But the image that needs to hang above my eyes for guidance and counselling, is no other than the image of a woman superior in mind and talent to the one I’m likely to grow into. The balloon that I’m desperately trying to catch seems to be filled with helium and flies ever higher. In it there’s a woman who I long to be. She is smart and sophisticated, talented and strong. She’s the kind of woman who through an immense amount of sincerity and sensitivity comes out head strong and vigilant after the many fights for her freedom. She’s independent and she lives for what she loves and what she loves is what she aims for. There is nobody she needs. Men accompany her on her journey not out of some sense of duty or because of a helpless cry she whimpers at the dead of night, but because she chooses to tolerate them. They neither add nor take away from her. They are merely fellow travellers who share a path at one point or another. Love is what keeps her from tipping over the edge. Her heart finds love wherever she goes: support from friends who become rocks so she can build on them. No fickle emotion can ever be good enough to take a place in her heart. This is do…or die.

Still, my unhappiness like Bukowski’s widow haunts each empty seat on the Ferris wheel. I’m always content and have become really good acting like I live on the golden middle ground, but the truth could not be further from reality. If I am the most balanced individual on the face of this planet, then we need more court jesters like myself. My inside is gasping with holes. My inner simplicity is tangled with the confused nature of a woman in a crisis. I am neither lonely nor surrounded by crowds. I am neither happy nor wearing a crown of gloom. What I am is simply lost. I am a soul that chose the path of uncertainty. I’ve left the One when I realised I could get away with not keeping in touch. He will surely want to have a long chat before He lets me in to his heavenly abode. I will regret every unwhispered prayer. I will regret every unopened page in His Book. I will regret every malicious thought; still He’s a friend I neglect.

I was looking too closely. I almost lost sight of the future I want to have. Just some ideas to share. Just an apartment to have. Just the single word of a man blinded by the desire to change.

I will be all right. I’ll be better than all right. One day I will have the independence. I will have my words to share. I will have coherency and I may even get to be the woman I so desperately wish to be.

Death of a Salesman

I am continually amazed at how much I’m learning each day. How much there is still to learn about the ways of the world and myself. It never ceases to baffle me how this process can never be a finite one. No matter where I’ll be, what I’ll do, how old I’ll be: there will always be something to learn. If it weren’t like this, mankind would not have been fuelled to excel. Motivation would not have been present and major theories and inventions would have died in the desk drawers.

I’ve learned so far that the main aim in life for everyone should be finding what they’re good at. It’s a strenuous process, but wholly rewarding at the end because everyone is good at something, and that only needs to surface. I’ve found writing. Modesty and an imminent threat of big headedness prevents me from saying I’m good at it, but I’m trying. Writing’s a craft that needs to be practised and polished. I love the craft of it. I love the potency of creation. I love the phoniness of it as well. I love the fact that the self can get lost in the haze of glamorous words and leave the writer nakedly exposed at the same time. This duality brings the craft its amazing power and the craftswoman’s hunger for appreciation, for each word offers the writer on a plate and therefore makes the creative vessel lead to unthinkable vulnerability. What I write is not me, but what I write is only me. If you look closely, you can see me bare all. But then comes the paradox. I possess a type of creativity that can only be called boxed in, or limited. I work well with limits, I respond to restraints and no matter how much my mind wonders, I still arrive back at the problem of lack of motivation, willpower and a fenced off scope of imagination. I’m creative but within the city limits. I’m something a little and something else a lot. I have to work out how to balance this and at the same time try to enhance my creative output. And I arrive back at the aforementioned path of nihilism and complacency running through my veins. A helpless state of being.

Then there’s love. I’ve learnt a lot about love too. After seven years, I have finally gotten it into my head that there’s two kinds of love. I’ve finally realised that the first kind, the one that everyone wants and should experience at least once, the kind that leaves you gasping for air, is the one that will leave you with scars much deeper than you expected. The kind of love that’s pure passion and blind and flaming and makes you want to hang from a trapeze, makes you travel far and wide, makes you cry and cry was never meant to last. That kind of love was meant to teach, but was never meant to last. That kind of silly passion and burning desire, heathen longing was only ever thrown down at us mortals from above for amusement. But we took it too seriously and some ended up waiting seven years: “for that kind of love, that kind of intensity surely can last. It can surely reach across oceans and lands. It can surely be re-ignited with just one glance”. And the heart has such power over the head. The heart can murmur soft words so it drowns out the sensible screaming of the head. I love the heart for having the faith and I respect the head for having the courage, but most of all I salute the compromise of the two in showing that love can be calm and gentle, mature and sensible, comforting and convincingly passionate. Love can be all this and a million more things.

At least now, my hopes are not in the sky and my heart’s not like grape gum on the ground. This train of thought I will continue because there’s far more to tell…

Jewel and Me

Then there are the dreams that stay sweet because they can never possibly be fulfilled. Dreams that were to become reality would hurt more than aid. Pretence is left for the weak hearted to fantasise. Projecting the unreal outwards leaves the inside relatively healthy. I am humbled beyond belief and shaken like an autumn leaf just at the thought, the sound, the sight of her. Jewel and Me: a whole chapter in my life that I will attempt to unveil.

It started when I was 17, in Prague. Prague that is forever tangled with love and love can only ever be Dan and Dan means failure and failure means self-doubt and self-doubt leaves me yearning for perfection. Jewel entered. Jewel’s second record “Spirit” was my first gate to self-discovery. The first Jewel record I owned. I listened to that record in awe and still do. She spoke of things that I realised were important not to her or me individually but to all of us: citizens of the world. The self experiences the pains of the world on a much smaller scale but that experience can be drawn on heavily when attempting to understand the evils and joys of living. So she, with her guitar and her fragile but magnificently powerful voice, sang about the deepness of despair, the hopes caught with one hand, the eyes filled with hatred, the brokenness of rejecting each other. And I was captured and a journey started that I take with my all time favourite singer: Jewel Kilcher.

But Jewel is more to me than just beautiful music, than just informed ideas, than just creative genius, than just an intelligent woman using the only podium she has to speak her mind. Over the years, I’ve built my own world around her. I’ve created a wholly distorted but perfectly comfortable padded saddle around her. But somewhere along the way my admiration turned into my own struggle at coming to terms with my life, my destiny, my desires. Jewel is just an aid, a tool, an image that I hang ideas of greatness on so that I can follow someone. So that I can follow someone mortal and present. I love the music, I love the ideas, I will forever love all that she does, but it’s not the woman in her that I love. It’s the music in her that I love. It’s the ideas in her that I love. It’s the beauty of sincerity that I love. It’s the guide that she’s been for me that I love. With that, I think even she can live.

Jewel’s to some extent a role model. Not because I want to be a guitar strumming, crowd working, entertainer. But because if I ever get to walk a path that is a dream, I hope that I would be able to handle it as smart as and as honest as she does. It’s not what she wears that’s important. It’s not how fancy a cord or tuning she twists her songs into. It’s how she uses the words to communicate her feelings. It’s the way she will bear all in an interview without you even knowing if she’s said anything at all. It’s the way she so quickly sees the connections between things and it’s the way she deals with the world as best she can, with all that wisdom and intelligence almost silently creeping in. Without a word, she has you off guard. If I ever will have the strength and determination to pursue a dream, I only wish that I could handle it as gracefully as Jewel’s been handling hers. Dreams are sacred and terribly fragile. Some think they are best left in a safe place without them ever seeing the light of day. I shamefully adhere to this philosophy and only allow myself to project a look of longing to the outside when I can pin it on something else, like Jewel. If Jewel puts out a new record, I have and excuse. I can come out and say all the things I want. It’s a childish game, but the safest I know. Jewel’s more to me than just the singer of lustrous melodies, of profound words, of eternal ideas. She is a dream I only ever dare to dream when it gets dark and no one can laugh.

It’s my one weakness. It’s one of my many faults. I elevate another human being onto a pedestal of greatness and worship her as a deity. If only Jesus was a pop star. But in fact it’s only truly an excuse for me to make everyone look at me for a second. Jewel will always mean a lot to me because she embodies everything I secretly want. Every dream I secretly dream, every future I secretly plan, and every answer I secretly circle around in my head.

Two weeks ago her sixth album was released under the name “goodbye alice in wonderland”. Three years ago her previous album “0304” was released. My dear friend Robert and I were sitting on the beach in Portugal days after I had received that album. I went on and on about all the above to Robert. He looked at me and said, “I wish she knew what she means to you”.

I wish she knew what she means to me. Jewel and Me. My eternal dream.

http://www.jeweljk.com/