One Evening in Early Spring

Undoubtedly spring is here. You can feel it in the warm breeze. You can see it on the streets. This earthy and sturdy city, which held revolutions, executions, Turks, Austrians, Russians is breathing a deep sigh of relief. It’s shedding the evils of winter: the salt on the streets aimed to thaw the snow. The potholes appear and smirk at tyres - which against their will- are steered straight into them. Colours appear. Colours of nature, colours of politics. Colours that mean nothing and yet divide nations. There’s red. Red covers the city. There’s orange. Orange covers the city. There’s blue. Blue covers the city. There’ green. Green covers the city. And in a week we can choose. Do I want the reds to decide about my future? Or do I want the oranges? None of the colours appeal. Can it really be called a choice when there’s nobody sincere enough or truthful enough to put my trust in?

But politics is dirty, it’s the game people play to manipulate and quench their thirst for power. To ease their hunger for leadership. All I want is to tell the tale of this peaceful evening. The city is awaking from the slumber it fell into three months ago. It’s beautiful to see this giant slowly rise. It’s magnificently graceful and tender. Tiny sings of life appear and the gentle giant carries the little songbirds on its shoulders. There’s harmony and sunshine and love all around. The windows are cleaned and the city is rubbing its eyes as it wakes to the sounds of spring. All along I try not to think of you. The Danube rocks boats from all around. Boats that have spent the winter anchored in some lonely part of the river meeting the shore. They are now set free and are sailing up and down the river that rubs against their tired bodies like pearls touching a soft neck. The water sparkles and loves the smothering of the sun’s rays.

The evening descends. The evening comes an hour later: there is more time for the green green grass and the million coloured flowers to bathe in the sun, to drink in the water, to attract the lovely insects and spread life. There’s more time to enjoy the reawakening of nature. So in juxtaposition I sit through images that show the evilness of men. People killed, lives ended so abruptly and so pointlessly. Can a life be ended any other way? I’m left to figure out this one alone. Goodbye my lover, goodbye my friend. The evening makes sure it enters the city limits as silently and painlessly as it possibly can. No harsh movements, no sudden leaps, just comforting slowness. I leave the tunnel and walk the stairs to the surface, waiting for my yellow chariot to appear. It whisks me across the river, through the city, up the hill, towards that point I want to be. And we’re racing the red and blue bus and we’re racing the cars and nobody can keep up. We’re winning; we’re winning by a lot. The lights flicker and illuminate the sights that appear so brilliant. Tiny little lights of a thousand dreams. All along I fight so hard not to ever give into you. The street that welcomes me is wearing the name so proudly of no-one less than the great man Bartók himself.

Undoubtedly spring is here. It’s in earnest. It’s impatient and is knocking on our windows and doors. It wants warmth and sun and life. It wants hearts; it wants to rob innocence from those who are so introverted. If only I could promise myself I wouldn’t fall into your arms were I to see you again. Spring collects all the beautiful scents and sends the wind up high to release them all at once on all of us. The city cloaks itself with a new dress, much more glamorous than the one it was basking in before. Its gift is colours and life and love: just one evening in the early days of the transformation, when everything is almost perfect.

Come what may, I will love you until my dying day.

The secret life of words

Who doesn’t want to be alone? Who doesn’t want to be left alone? Who isn’t bothered by the evils of this rotten world? Who doesn’t want to shut the outside world far far away so it can never creep its way back to the endless days? Who doesn’t hope someone will take care of them? Who doesn’t hope the end would come just a little bit more mercifully? Who doesn’t want to change sorrow for joy? Who doesn’t believe that to survive, the humane has to override the vice? Who doesn’t want to have beautiful white wings to fly away from the pain? Who doesn’t want a life that can be lived a whole new way? Who doesn’t cry with the ones that cannot smile? Who doesn’t feel their souls torn when brokenness rises to the surface? Who doesn’t want to reach out when there’s someone who needs a tender touch? Who doesn’t want to feel the sun drying their tear-ridden cheeks? Who doesn’t want to forget? Who doesn’t want to live? Who doesn’t want to love? Who doesn’t want to understand the silent? Who doesn’t want to listen when that’s the only way they can help? Who doesn’t want to leave everything behind when there’s nothing left to live for? Who doesn’t want hope? Who doesn’t want the time to never just pass but be filled with meaning? Who doesn’t want to stop the hurting of those they love? Who doesn’t want to hold the dry and fragile hands of the other who needs protection? Who doesn’t want to feel? Who doesn’t want to erase the past when the past is pain? Who doesn’t want to? Who wants to? Who wants to love? Who wants to hope? Who wants to glue every broken part of their soul back into one whole shape? Love. Hope. Secret. Darkness. Silence. Tear. Pain.

I’m hoping someone would take care of me, When I die, will I go?

St Maarten

Not everything is perfect. Not every smile is sincere. Not every friendship is built on rocks. Not every distance is real. But there are times when perfection and sincerity, friendship and distance all join forces for a moment in time and everything becomes whole. Times like these tear the heart apart from the yearning it feels afterwards. Times like these make the soul dance high above the ground. Times like these get engraved and can never be taken away.

For vagabonds like myself there are only moments of perfection and security. My life is built on these moments in the past or in the future that are only briefly ever reality. Last week. Last week was a moment of reality. Now that moment is only the past, but I mourn not the passing of time but celebrate the existence of it as a memory. Still my eyes swell with tears that appear as a result of the pain parting causes. Despite the fact that I know the end is inevitable, somehow that does not help coping with it. So I sit there ten thousand feet above the ocean, in the dark when it’s light outside, in the cold when it’s warm inside and I cannot help but cry. Flying on wings that can hold the world’s weight, I see only the frailty of my life. I see only how the wheels of the world turn ever further from the direction I want to be in. I see how all the moments of high collected to span over a couple of hours is only what I live for.

For vagabonds like myself home is never a geographical location, but people. My family. My dear family travelling on different ice plates and only seldom bumping into each other. My friends. My precious friends with whom I try to hold hands and reach across the world so that we can make the distance seem a little easier to bear. My friends take turns in who lives in close proximity. Vagabonds will have vagabond friends who only ever get to live close to each other when the stars are aligned once in a million years. Then they part, just like the stars and leave memories and a constant wanting to turn a lever that will make the stars align again. But the fight is in vain and I softly wipe away the salty teardrop. I wish for that teardrop to fall below into the ocean, into the salty ocean and join its family, the equilibrium, the splendid happiness.

Every single one of you my friends has a part of me. Whether you’re on an island dear one with sea and sun and warmth or cold and clouds and grey, you’re in my heart. Whether you’re in cities grand or small, pretty or plain, you’re in my heart. Whether you’re in countries of luxury or need, you’re in my heart. Whether you’re hungry for want or bursting with abundance, I think of you always. I miss you, always.

Tört Szárnyú Pillangók – Broken Winged Butterflies

The last thing I want is for this entry to be about me. But there’s no escaping the inevitability that a writer’s job is ultimately for every entry to be about his/her personal experience, cloaked in the beauty of literature. Words get moulded to every occasion and phrases get used and overused and misused and almost abused just to fit the heightened mood of excitement. Never does a writer offer her craft selflessly. Never is the reader made to forget whose words they’re reading. A thankless effort, but someone has to point out the pure selfishness of writing. The art for art’s sake pedagogy, that floods any other idea hidden on the page. The selfish deed, the writer’s work.

But there are people who cannot write and cannot sing and cannot shout. There are children who with no thought of the self live and play and dream. It is only I who is sitting here ashamed that I am not more like those who stay silent and humble and are never driven out of some useless desire to hear only their own voices. There are children who love because they can. They are fragile and different but they are beautiful butterflies. They don’t much care to see or hear themselves against a mirror. They don’t see the world and see evil. They love with their little hearts and fly with their broken little wings. They are children who will get nothing but abuse, mockery and hate from this world. And they will learn to never listen to those who only see their broken wings, but to embrace everyone else who sees them as whole.

And there are countries that cannot rise from the pains and marks of constant battering. For years and years the torture and the shame have burnt a mark that can never be erased. There are streets and valleys and cities where everything lies wasted, left to die, to rot, left to vanish and to disappear. My heart bleeds for places like these. My heart bleeds for a present that can never be real because of the past. The pain is too much to bear. The effort is too grave to undertake alone. So the country stands barely alive, barely breathing, just so we can walk on its back and catch lingering thoughts of days gone past. Nobody cares that infinity has vanished. The butterfly that once flew around colourful flowers is now broken and with its colours lost and its liveliness gone, is just waiting for a kind soul to come and step on what’s left so she can move on.

There’s a lot of brokenness in this world. There are a lot of people who see only themselves. There are a lot of fake preachers. But there are also a lot of butterflies.