This is do or die

I’m this close to writing a piece about Jewel. For now, you’re all spared...

A few years ago my mom told me that soon it will be really hard for me. That I will need to scratch and burn to find myself in life and that if once I’ve done that, it’ll be an easy ride. Back then I thought it’s no big deal, I can handle it, nothing really hard in my life. Now? Now I’m beginning to understand what she was talking about. Now I’m starting to see how very complex everything is and now I’ve arrived at the time where I question most things I see and hear and feel. And boy is it hard….

Most of my confusion turns into anger. Anger at my own immobility. At my own unwillingness to act rather than just write. Everyone can write but I was not taught to act. If there is a drowning man, I would not be able to help him. I was not given the skills to be a passionate advocate of any deed. If there was a drowning man, all I could do is describe the water. All I have is words and words make me lazy. I don’t act. I don’t follow pursuit. Does it seem like I'm refusing to take the blame? I am probably trying to divert the responsability, but what I desire most vividly is for you to point and stare at me, name and shame so everyone knows: I'm the one who won't act. Why? Because there is nothing and has been nothing and most probably will be nothing in my life that can shake me to the core. The nearest was one foolish love affair, and that would have been better left untouched as well. I fall into routines, pointless, meaningless, bagatelle routines. I don’t aim to alter the path of anything: I just exist. I take up space and produce toxins and kill brain cells and provide nothing. I’m like my friends who choose never to give, only to receive. This is why every day is a struggle. A struggle I can either take part in or watch from the sidelines. But this should really be my struggle.

Sometimes I wish I was forced to fight for something. God make me a Nepalese Maoist so I can fight the king’s army far away in the mountains! Or make me a resistant activist in Byelorussia who gets beaten and jailed for saying the one party state is wrong. Make me feel that what I think and say and do: all ALL have major consequences, because like this, complacency is what I drive myself into. Make me transcend time so I can be a suffragette or a Mexican Zapatista, a FARC freedom fighter or join that generation who has the revolution. Like this, without ideals, without a cause to fight for, I’m a generation without direction. I’m a lost child of a world that gives me nothing to hold onto. I’m, at the tender age of 24, starting to think there isn’t that much greatness in this world.

This is where I start to think, it’s completely silly and self obsessed of Jewel to put out a record purely about her. This is where I start to think that as soon as I can, I have to stop the self from existing. But still, I write with the “I” as the most central ornament of my sentences. Thoughts all begin with the “I” and every experience is jotted down in my head, distorted by my own dubious world vision. Filtered through my interpretations, which are based on pompous ideas about the importance of literature, music, art, the intelligentsia in a world where this comprises only the minority. Will it be a long slow slide down from now? This is where I can start to begin to understand those desperate enough to want to do something, anything. This is where a promise of a paradise now can start to seem attractive.

I can write pages and pages and not a thing will change. I have only words. I lack the desire for the deeds. I will analyse and over analyse and dissect and magnify but even scrutiny by an electron microscope won’t be powerful enough to make me shift my matter from one end to the other. But it’s hard. My mom was right, like most times. I ran a great big circle and now I’m back to where I started from. Tomorrow I will continue to live solely for me. I will embark on much the same routines and care only about what is good for me. This is where tomorrow again I will fail the world. I will fail people who cannot be free. I will fail the women of Iran. I will fail the forgotten Hmong people of Laos. I will fail the ones disposed of on the Killing Fields. I will fail all the victims of wars and still act like I have no care in the world.

And the worst is that only with time will I see what I could have done to alter the path of my reality.

And I’m afraid that even walking silently with Bartók can’t ever be enough.

*24*

I doubt I’ll ever have it all. I see the days as struggles that only seldom end in glories. I will forever search for perfection, when that doesn’t even exist. I will for moments come close to it. I will feel the burning rush of the vicinity of perfection, but I will never brush shoulders with it. I doubt I’ll have the determination to fight for the dreams I have. I’m young and complacent and will sooner than imagined find myself in a complete monotony. I will never be satisfied and I will forever fear the light for it may paralyse me. I will feel rage when there’s not enough love. I will demand respect and acceptance but will turn corners to find concrete walls where my only task will be to walk through them. The frustration will lead me to run and scream. On every plane of my life I will lock away the desires and turn them into secret gems. I’m frightened that I will be running in circles. I doubt I’ll ever have it all and defeatism doesn’t even start to cover it. So why am I crying? Because I’m so alone. It will take me a long time to find the one who’s home.

The gardener

Not the constant gardener, just the one who appears with the first cherry blossom to tend to every need of the waking nature. To cut and clean, to plant and water, to beautify that which is already beautiful. And the gardener makes me think about the path my life takes. About the twists and turns, the ups and downs, the doubts and the shadows cast over days and years.

The gardener I always envied when I walked into the prestigious building of the BBC. White City. Starting at the top was maybe not the best of ideas. I knew very little else, I just did what was required of me. Dozed in a trans, I got off the bus after having spent an hour lost in the world of the fabulous Jewel or Patty Griffin or Rosie Thomas. Having to walk that flight of stairs or travel those minutes by elevator, I was slowly crushed into the smallest I could be only to survive. To live through the harsh conditions that were awaiting me once I found an empty desk. Hot desking. A cruel game to play on a rookie. Find the desk that’s empty and claim it as your own for a day. The battle starts all over again the next day. There’s no glory. There’s no constancy. Dreading every minute, my only wish was to be not there. They were all too busy marching to higher places to notice that they were trampling on me. A real stampede and I wonder how I even survived.

In an empty moment I glanced outside and wished so badly to be that gardener. He seemed happy and free. He didn’t have to hot desk. He didn’t have to obey to commands so foreign to his ears. He only needed to work with the plants that neither hurt him nor saw through him. He could find refuge on a patch of green amongst the beings he helped into existence. And it was all his secret garden. Peace and beauty outside when all that surrounded him from the inside was shmoozing and whispers of ladders to climb and projects to get on board with. But all he needed to care for were daffodils and lilacs, the turf and the bushes with blossoms of white petals. So I envied him, I envied the gardener for his luck in life.

Seasons came and seasons passed and not until a few days ago did the gardener appear again. Almost two years on, I see a gardener on the lawn coming into my office. Only after a few mornings do I realise how much I envied the BBC’s gardener. It all seems a bit silly now. This gardener gets all my respect but none of my envy. Where I am now is peaceful. I don’t need to hot desk anymore. Got a desk all to myself. I don’t need to reduce myself to a tiny shell almost invisible to others around me. I can show all of me. I can want more than the graceful nature of trees and bushes and flowers around me. I can be me and the gardener can tend to the garden without my longing eyes on him. I have my path to walk and he may always be near, but he won’t take its place. He’ll stay outside and I’ll stay inside and between us there is only a secret garden that I hide.

On my farm in Wyoming…

On my farm in Wyoming there is a gentle breeze making friends with the tips of my tired fingers. The memories gone and the times not yet here whisk by in a rush through my fingers. I remember days when the sun was high, my hand hung low, tossed at the wind’s command out of a truck's window. I remember the travels I took to arrive at my farm in Wyoming. The roads that tricked me into thinking there was a direction in them. The signs that without malice or vice failed to show me where I asked them to lead. The cracks in the dirt road, which finally were my guides and took me to the hills and lakes of Wyoming. After all, I now know: I always take the long way home.

On my farm in Wyoming the ruthless sun tortures the floorboards on the porch. The paint’s peeling off and crumbles each time I step on it. The stairs leading to the path creak as I try to creep down to the edge of the water. My toes just touch the water. It’s fresh and honest. The water hides nothing from me. The reflection ripples as the pebbles enter the surface. Skip, hop, skip, hop, sink. The most soothing drown. The most peaceful letting go and becoming one with nature. Then there are the days I want to dive in and sink to the bottom of the lake and back again. I think I would find the hidden truth down there. I would not stop until I touched the bottom and opened the world beyond my reach. I hope the bubbles and the mermaids would eventually carry me back to the shore, but only because of you.

On my farm in Wyoming the fields run into the mountains. The ridges cover the sky, almost all of it. The clouds merge with the silhouette of the gentle giants. On their backs the goats and sheep find refuge. On their backs there are trails to the sun, the moon, the many stars, the universe. When the night descends I walk to my mountains and ask them to gently lift me high so I can put my face close to the stars and feel their warmth and feel their generous light. Then my mountains bask in the untouchable like me. We smile as we look at each other. My mountains see right through me. They whisper words of comfort each time I turn to them with tearful eyes and beg them to please lift me up and never, never let me down. They know that on their backs I take walks that bring me much much closer to me. They like this secret pact I’ve made with them. They are proud to shelter the fields from the scorching sun and open the waters to the source of eternal life. They like to protect and watch over. They protect the lakes and the fields, the woods and the meadows, the shadows, the dark, the living and the dying, everything that breathes: gentle or rough, evil or drained, everything that exists on my farm in Wyoming.

On my farm in Wyoming I am far from the choking love of others. I am far from others who see only lumps of rock, wells of water or stretches of soil. I am far from those who see empty. On my farm in Wyoming everything is full. The birds sing harmonies to wake the slumbering nature and prepare for the annual spring dance. Everyone is invited but they all hush at the sight of my farm in Wyoming. The cowboys tip their hats, the butterflies prepare to stand still and the leaves stop murmuring a subtonic monotone as they all look around my farm in Wyoming. Silence hangs in the air not as a forceful measure but as a graceful presence. The farm glows from the truth and the peace. My farm in Wyoming is the most beautiful place for me. Please come and stay at my farm in Wyoming. The wind will hurry up the porch to tell me you’re coming. I will sip my herbal tea, silently escape to the lake, stand tall on the mountains, run across the fields of gold and I will arrive at the gate with the wind, and I will let you in. Just come on in. Please come and see the secret garden of my soul’s haven. Please come and see my farm in Wyoming…

…two for the money…

Monday night football: Minnesota versus New York. You can bet on me, because they call me the million dollar man, oh yes. I have the numbers you need and the numbers that are the winning scores. From Hollywood to Tokyo to London, this is where it is, that’s right, this is where it all happens. I bring you the picks, I bring you the picks.

But after it all. After all the highs and the money, the fame, the temptation, the ecstasy that’s ripping your soul, the fantasy that engulfs your reality, after all that happens, after the hollow reveals itself: the truth appears. And the truth is that there’s nothing. There is nothing. There is nothing in this human existence. The body is crippled and the soul is based on ideas too fickle to hold together anything of substance. There’s a broken amalgam of atoms, there is nothing. The pain may trick us into believing that there is more than the shell, but the shell is all there is. We’re nothing. We’re not anything because of the money, because of the power, because of the control, because of the fame. We’re all nothing because the world that surrounds us is made up of lies. And with a blow, with a gentle blow everything can crumble. We’re nothing unless there is some other soul we can hold onto. We’re not even a mustard seed. I doubt we’re even a dust particle on a mustard seed. There’s emptiness. There’s void. There’s a deep dark. It may be hard hitting, but there’s a point at which the road between right and wrong divides and we’re all made to choose. And we all veer off course. And at one point we all realise that there’s nothing. There’s famine and bloodshed, there’s hatred and vengeance. There are people whose clear thinking is blurred by the idea of eternal glory and there are people whose clear thinking is blurred by the smell of money. Pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, sloth: memorise this because we’re nothing. We’re all nothing. Nothing. Unless you let someone close enough to touch your soul. Can you feel them touching your soul? Can you feel them reaching to your core with the tender, honest, truthful words? That’s the rope that we must all try to catch before we fall into the abyss of nothing. Clench that someone who can make you feel like something because otherwise it’s just a skeleton, a shell, a hard suit with a beautiful mask that we wear during the few years we inhabit this earth.

I’m held with a safety harness, hovering above the lakes and mountains and planes. I’m held on a rope that allows me to freely almost fly between the different lands and different ideas. I see that there can easily be nothing. And I see that there can easily be something. It’s what we chose and it’s what makes us so incredible and mesmerising. Amidst all the brokenness there’s a ray of light. Is there a ray of light? So strong is the human race that with the fellowship of only two, a fort can be built. And that fort will keep out all the evils it will be so mighty. The task is merely to unite with another and start hinging the windows and doors.

So tomorrow I’ll go and vote. Not because I feel passionate about it, but because I must. I must for the sake of women in the world who cannot make their opinions count. For people in the world who are silenced when they speak the truth about injustice. I must vote for those before me on the pages of history who fought with all their mights for my right. For those who were maimed, tortured, killed, humiliated so that tomorrow I can tick, cross out, mark what I want to happen to my life. For my grandparents who never in their lives could vote, who never mattered. I’ll take a side because I must. The lack of conviction is paralysing but not totally decapitating. I must honour the legacy of all the freedom fighters, present and gone, with my participation.

And why do I feel like I’m nothing? Because the battles that I fight are all internal. Because I can vote already. Because I have no need in anything. Because only if I was to sell my soul would I have hindsight. Because it’s the disease of mankind all over the world. Because the life of abundance and luxury creates idleness and complacency. Because so many will not go and vote tomorrow. Because so many feel not one bit better off for all that they let in. Who will teach us? If only I knew...

The beat that my heart skipped….

Spring’s set foot, permanently. I know because the hairy legs start to appear on streets. Bicycles flood the sidewalks and it seems their riders have forgotten the basic rules of traffic for they fall and crash and turn all the wrong corners. The tulips that last year were black have now returned to their original colours of yellow and red. The river’s gained so much in strength. It’s like a shy and harmless dog that’s come all the way to our hands that is reaching out to touch it. It’s sniffing our arms and legs and faces to see whether me mean harm or genuine affection. The Danube has come so close we can touch it. Street signs are up to their necks in its filthy water. The water is brining logs and dirt from the Black Forest and carrying it all the way down to the Black Sea. But between all that blackness, the Danube creates life and has done so for many years. So the fact that it’s reaching out for us, the people it serves, is just a humbling experience. It wants to be touched. It wants the sweet caress of the sun, the people, the love. It wants to feel that we respect its power. I can wipe all of you off, it thinks, but deep down it just wants to rub against the gentle hands of those who care for him.

We all must take a side. The Danube has two sides. This country therefore has two sides. The geographical sides then turn to political sides. The old battle of the reds and the oranges. I refuse to take sides because I do not think truth has a side. Truth would not align itself either or, it would stand alone in grace. But grace is not what defines the segregation of sides. That I’m not nationalistic enough because I don’t sing the anthem of a land that is only cared about in theory? That I don’t breath hypocrisy into every sentence I create? Well I just chose to be left to make my own choices. Please, let me make my own choices. Please, stop with the banalities of political rallying. Please, see that no colour can make the truth look anything else but an empty seat in this country’s Parliament.

So to take on what I believe I’m destined for. Everyone can write, but most people are not as paralysed as me. A story should be created. A narrative should be born right about now. But weaving without a thread is a rather strenuous effort and quite frankly, a pointless one. I try to stimulate my senses. I take walks, I listen to music, I watch others act, I hear others play, I wonder onto streets nobody has dared to walk on before me. But alas, the words only come to the extent of one page to be put on display on this exact forum: this ill-fated forum. Maybe I’m not mature enough to hold my thoughts together. Maybe I’m not patient enough. Ultimately, maybe I’m just not good enough.

But you…You, who dares to hold a mask all your life. You, who sees everything distorted. You…you cannot but make me want to write so your eyes would open. So where shall I start? Shall I write plain and simple? Shall I write twisted and confused? Shall I tell the story of You? Would you understand that all your steps bring those you love closer to killing them? Would you understand that the hands that hold to protect tighten into a choking clench? I would be throwing my words against a glass wall. Inaudible and by choice invisible. You try to hide behind that mask, but there’s no mask clever enough to hide what your heart shows. You, who thinks life is long enough for it to be a game, just wake up!

Then there’s love. He says one thing leads to another and that we can never escape: what leaves its mark, leave its mark. So with a branding burnt into my skin, I try to join a new herd. My cowboy will never look for me, so I need to find pastures greener than green. Damn that cowboy and damn those kisses. But I’m free. Like the one I follow, who skips and hops and flies in this world freer than anyone else I have ever known.

None of this makes any sense to you, but none of this even really matters.