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/

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.

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.

We are doing something very wrong

Thought you had all the answers to rest your heart upon.

Nobody has all the answers. Everyone goes through life trying their best to figure out what the meaning is. Some find deliverance in hands thrust high above whilst chanting about love, a love that I truly question they feel for The Saviour. But it’s there that they find the meaning. There are others who build dreams and lives on paper, whatever colour that may be, however fickle it may be, the sound and smell of money mean meaning to them. There are those who blindly navigate arms and ships and planes and themselves into other arms and ships and planes and people and bask in the glory of holy sacrifice. But nobody, not any of these people have all the answers. They simply choose to take a moment, a decisive moment of high as a rule of thumb for the rest of their lives.

If I was to wear a cloak of a person who speaks to many others: words of wisdom or truth or neither, I would find myself entangled in a desperate lie. If this world would not twist my stomach and would not turn my insides out from the deep disgust that it triggers in me, I would love to consider speaking the truth to others. I would love to devote myself to the search of a truth, to the search of an answer to everything. I would stand on mountains so high and would gaze in the dreamy eyes of innocent children down in the deep. I would walk fields of wheat and corn and meadows of fresh grass and woods of ancient oak trees. I would become one with the desert and one with the ocean and one with the body of the earth that I would kiss each time I spoke. But there is nothing in this world as I know it that would tempt me to follow whoever has gone before me and use what little resource I have to teach.

But it is I who is the cowardly. It is I who chooses not to look when looking is all that’s required of me. It is I who turns the page when the page needs staring at. And ultimately it will be I who will walk away from a destiny for the want of something more. My words will reach no-one and my teachings will never begin. I will never be enough to start to share and I will hide and speak only to those who come find me. The challenge is, that amidst all the evil, all the killing, the hatred, the lies, the blood: to see a seed where a shoot can grow from. To find that place that’s untouched by the wrongs of humans and bring back the love for each other without the banalities of preaching a perfect kingdom. Perfection has been lost eternally. The answers lie wasted and hidden away never to be found. Never to be found.

God, if he knows at all, is staying very quiet. God, if he sees at all, is staying very quiet. Men, who follow God, stay very quiet. Evil, that opposes God, laughs so loud it bursts my ears. Evil, that opposes God, finds many strayed hearts to convince to follow the loudness. But the answers, that would bring an end to all that make me not want to be the creator of words and ideas and stories and thoughts, have flown so far they can never be caught. The answers dance their sacred and voluptuous dance around all of us who try to woo them into our realms. They never give themselves to any of us, because somewhere along the way and up to this moment, we are doing something very wrong.

Thought you had all the answers to rest your heart upon.

From Work

I've never done this, but I will post from work. Most blogs I've read were written from the work place, when people had a moment to spare. More than a moment is what I have to spare. If only there was a moment, I wouldn't write this post. I also think that for once I should cast aside all my literary ambitions and write something that people can read and grasp and respond to. I tend to wander off into places that are even sometimes hard for my mind to follow. I just write and when it comes to reading the lines back and attaching meaning to them, I'm swimming in the stream of ambiguity.

But now time is on my side. I have an hour and a quarter left from sitting here pretending I'm coordinating and then I'm off. It's not the lack of anything that makes me feel uneasy. It's the abundance of time that I have to grapple with every day. There is only so much database updating you can do in a day. There is only so much excel sheet alterations you can do to crown your day. The repetitiveness of it all sometimes makes me go insane. And I am not a veteran, just a rookie, a dreamy eyed, inexperienced, full of mistakes rookie. But my mistakes are not embalmed and not nurtured to grow into small triumphs, they are nipped at the bud and killed instantly by the hands of the most ruthless one. Teaching is seldom what happens. Rhetoric with a tone of aggression is what stares in my face if my path is hindered by a mistake.

Maybe this is the way to learn. Maybe by hitting my face against a mirror, I will eventually begin to see. I will begin to see if my eyes are not blinded by blood and pieces of the broken mirror. I will see where I have gone wrong if enough pressure is exerted on me. If only hypocrisy would not breed in places it was never meant for. There is little I can do but silently disagree or take the pain and walk the line. But who am I kidding? Y'all can't walk no line.

Right peeps, only an hour left. Frustration will lead me one day to pack my bags and leave. This company does not have a power over me that can chain me to the now. I will fly if I'm further bruised and battered. I will not allow any dirty soul to throw sand in my face. Now here take this, from the workplace, undisturbed and uninterrupted, all along lovely on the outside but purely rotten on the inside. Venture with me further than you ever imagined you could be. Grin and fake the emotions until it's time to stop and cheer on the next. The task is set.

Katarina Zsófi Cardoso

There’s a little girl, barely a week old, on the island of Bermuda. The road she will walk on is still unclear. The joys and fears in her life - that will set in no matter how much those who love her want to protect her – will come and go and teach her of things she must learn about herself. She will play in the sand and she will draw paintings on the wall and she will utter words that will resemble love. She will smile and laugh and cry and struggle just to make sense of this crazy world. Her little life has now begun and it is up to all of us to make sure she can be whatever she wants to be.

She’s called Zsófi. Her middle name is Zsófi but for me, that’s just as well as calling her Zsófi. Her story starts somewhere in the deep jungle of Communism, or the glory days of the first and perfect love, or maybe the outer space that was only ever conquered by the Little Prince. All that happened was just I meeting a boy who claimed my heart. This boy took me on streets that never ended. He took me to places that never existed. He whispered words that never could have taken more of me. We had everything amidst the engulfing reality of nothing. We were kids and thought that John Lennon was really onto something when he said, “all you need is love”. So we built a world where only he and I existed. Where every word was a promise and where eternity set it. Only time was against us. We were against us. He went left and I went right and our paths never crossed again. He left my life and took something that can never be replaced. To this day, I mourn and celebrate the love that he and I shared. But him leaving allowed someone else to enter my life.

Our love crumbled but the Little Princess came to rescue. He, the silly, the vivacious, the unthinkably imaginative lured the lovely Michelle into his realm. It seems all along he wanted her and I to meet. We both only wanted to have him, but all along, he wanted Michelle and I to have each other. My message to him was always that which the fox told the Little Prince, “you’ve tamed me, you have me, I am your friend”. He passed it on to Michelle. As caring and lovely and beautifully hearted he is, he let another friend share those ever lasting thoughts. And with love in his eyes, he told stories of a girl called Zsófi, who on the other side of the world had him fully and Michelle listened endlessly.

When the timing was right, or when it could not have been any worse, he left. He left Michelle and I alone. So as brave soldiers her and I began to exchange stories. Stories about love, life, future, children, husband, dogs, names, books, things. Last week Michelle’s little girl Katarina was born. Because of love, because of loss, because of a desperate desire to hold on, because of the passion that burns for other people, because of a dream, Katarina got the second name Zsófi.

Not my merit. Not anyone’s merit. This little girl’s story begins with her mom’s friends’ paths that will always be inexplicably tangled. But I hope that little Katarina will once know the story of her second name. I hope that she will read the pages of the Little Prince. And I hope that she will once have a boy love her as much as he loved me.

I’m growing fat on fantasy

The nakedness of the soul. To show the self stripped of all its glory. To tell the world the most private secrets. To hang every detail in the air for it to catch a drift and fly where it was never intended to go. Every fantasy blown up into billboard size. Where everyone can see everything till then hidden. To unmask the well protected spirit so that others can poke fun of. Shall I dare? Shall I dare as well?

I take centre stage. I want to tell my story. I want to be brave and show the parts that are sometimes dark. I want to enjoy the light. I want to say goodbye to Alice in Wonderland. I want to be afraid of the plans, the ideas, the yearnings in my mind. I want to say everything that I’m scared of accepting. I want to rid denial. I want to bathe in the beauty that surrounds me. I want to see the certain and I want to walk the road that equips me with the passion that keeps burning for all eternity. I want to embrace the desire. I want to live every reverie not running away but running towards the unknown.

So much power is lost in the voice. So much is lost between the mind and the mouth. Words escape me and all I am left with is the skeleton, the hard shell, which scarcely reminds me of the idea. It bears no resemblance to the one I had so clearly seen in my mind. But there is a constant need, desire to better myself. There is a constant yearning to see something more. I want to use these words, these words that are my friends one day and swear an oath against me the next. I want to lure them into my realm so that they will never want to escape me. I want them to obey and make stories for everyone to read. I want them to be proud and dance around the page like queens in a diamond ballroom. I offer them friendship in the hope that they will not forsake me. I will treat them right. I will give them ideas that will never tire their enthusiasm. I will take care of them and cherish their little lives. I want them to accompany me on this road that I want to be brave enough to embark on. The road I must start walking on sooner or later. The path that terrifies me. The one that I please by giving pieces of myself when it wants to whole of me.

And time. Time never leaves my side. Time reveals itself and shows its magic only to me. Sometimes I get lost with time on a field covered with flowers of all colours. I lie there dreaming of stillness and time next to me dreams of an end to eternity. What is tiresome to me is a pleasure for time. So I take time by the hand and show both of us the strength that I have inside. The strength that I am learning day by day to tame. There are things to fear for my friends the words and my friend time as well. I have demons and powers, devils and angels inside me that are shouting ever louder. They want to escape and see the surface. Those who choose to walk by my side will have to make their peace with every part of me. With all of me. All the twists and all the unknown and all the untamed and hidden and secret and protected.

Once I’ve grown old and will see the past before me like a map, I want to turn to my words and thank them. I want to stroke them and have tears fill my eyes. I want to bow before them and appoint them the real masters. I want to embalm them and see them take their rightly deserved place on the page protected by a heavy cover. Page after page. Them smiling back at me with content. I want to live to see that day. I want to live to be all I want to be. I want to have my words do the talking for me. This is all I want.

Universal Fighters for a Home

Brothers and sisters in arms, have you found home? Have you ever stopped to think where that home may be? Is it easier to clench an ideal rather than live in reality? Where is the home that’s nothing more than peace and love? Where is the end of the struggle you’ve been living to keep alive?

What kind of home forces its people to grab arms and kill in its name? What kind of sick and demented home is it if it needs to see the blood of children? What kind of mutant of an idea circles in the heads of those who proclaim to do everything in the name of the home? Where is it written that a home can only be yours through massacre? Kill as many, maim as many, hate as many as you possibly can for I am the HOME and this land is your HOME and there can never be anything else but the HOME.

There are parades where the sounds of rifles shooting to aim at someone from the same home will drown out every other celebratory sounds. There is nothing glorious about having a home where the streets are decorated with corpses and amputated limbs swimming in a pool of blood. Why then, brothers and sisters in arms, do you STILL believe in the lie that your home wants you to fight? Why do you think yourselves to be righteous? Why can’t you see that the land you're fighting for is not home, just war? Why can’t you realise that home is never geography but people? Would you fight for people or just a piece of soulless soil? Is it easier to kill an innocent man who stands on that soil which you claim to be yours than forgive and invite him into your homes? You’re young and beautiful, why oh why do you let the ancient fuel hatred into your fragile minds?

Home can never be defined anything else but love. But I doubt that you kill for love and destroy for love. I doubt you know the meaning of patriot love. I doubt you can love. I doubt you know what it means to have a home where that home means love. I doubt you’d see it even if it bit you in the eyes. I doubt you’d let love in. I doubt you’d give up those arms for the sake of love. This is why my brothers and sisters is arms you will never have a home and you will never have a home that’s love.

I wish I could promise you a beautiful world

When was the last time you went to the cinema and the first person to leave stood up when the gaffer’s name appeared in the end credits? None of them stirred. For how could they when humanity was depicted on the screen in the most unspeakable way. Silence hung in the auditorium and nobody dared to speak. All their faults, all their lies and their unwillingness to acknowledge hung on the big screen in front of them. In front of me. Every person we ever turned our backs to came rushing forward in our memories. Every child that we saw pictured abandoned by love, hope and peace floated in our minds’ eye. Everything that we hold dear left us. Everything that we knew to be right fooled us.

Sitting and wishing for a perfect end was not what I caught myself doing. The problems apparent in societies that are tortured by the developed world should not be new to any learned man. Corruption, exploitation, killing, feeding the lust for violence is all that we know too well to teach the innocent and humble. Destroying their cultures and hierarchies, their customs and their ways of dealing with sorrow, death, love, life, children is all we ever showed them of our perfect civilization. I am to blame because I stay silent. I am to blame because I go on worrying about myself. I am to blame because I see the black end of the endless road and keep it a secret. But that piece of metal that is blindly and wrongly and willingly thrust into any part of the body silences those who stand up and YELL. But fear does not paralyse the good ones. Those with a mission and heart will never be made to sit back and watch the terror unfold.

War on terror? This is terror. Children running scared from their countrymen who are out to steal, kill, rape, capture IS terror. Women who are given drugs to help battle deadly diseases that kill them in the end IS terror. Multi national corporate hell bound companies giving free medicine to the needy, which they know will wipe them out IS terror. Seeing your helpless flesh and blood take another pill of poison IS terror. Nobody is out to get these terrorists. Nobody dares to speak up and unveil because these terrorists don’t fly planes into heartless objects, they kill only and ONLY your own. If this isn’t, then what is terror? There is no war being fought where the money keeps rolling in. There will never be a war fought for those who are bound by severe illnesses. There is no hope, there is no cure, there is no peace and there is no salvation for any of us, for we are doomed to burn in hell.

I wish I could promise you a beautiful world, my unborn child. But this is all we’ve got: this world, where half of us have no voice, where half of us don’t count. There is no beauty in this world, at least not reflected in humans. I wish I could see where it all would end, but the ties get twisted more and more. Something that is far away seems unable to effect us. Something that happens to others we know nothing of seems to escape us. Africa never touches our hearts. Africa never has a face. Drugs cure. Drugs never kill. Drugs work and Africa will be saved, but Africa stays in the shadows of giants who want to sell, buy, live, torture and feed the need to kill.

I wish I could promise you a beautiful world, my unborn child but the world is dying because there is nobody loud enough to shout STOP!

Writing relentlessly in vain

Is there a point to all this? It’s not that I am profoundly disappointed or disinterested in the world or that I doubt the significance of the written word, I only question the relevance of a few jotted and hidden ideas published on pages that never existed. Is this any different to writing for the desk drawer? What if there are ideas that people have to learn about? What if there are valuable words and thoughts that should be shared? What is the reward and what if the light kills all the best intentions? Is it in the writer’s destiny to be ridden, crippled, mutilated by self-doubt? Can true creativity not thrive on something whole and healthy and balanced?

I see pictures of beautiful babies. I read stories of love, revenge, betrayal and the all too often mundane and not at all important. What happens to the stories if nobody reads them? Do they stay stories or become mere words on a piece of virtual paper? So many times the issue of worthlessness comes to a hand. For why do I sit here and write when there’s really nobody who will be affected? But one that sees these words as a matter of life and death cannot deny the process of creation. One who feels that staying alive and breathing can only ever be through creating thin threads of ideas and hanging them out into ether for anyone and everyone to reach it, writing is essential. If there is no way to create, there is no way to live. If there is no way to write, there is no way to stay alive. Nobody cares and nobody will ever read, but to create is to save oneself from eternal darkness, from drowning in a fearful sea.

Even if there is little point, there has to be words written on the page. Even if they say nothing at all they have to be there to keep at least one of us sane and maybe safe. I’ll read it. I’ll love it. I’ll live it. I’ll create the haven from which strands of beauty will grow. I’ll create the wisdom, which will spread its white wings over the lives of others. I will hold down the rain and I will catch the smile of the ever darkness. I will write so you can come and say: what’s the point to all this?

Before and After

New Year

There’s a new year. There’s a chance for the start of something new, but everything moves much the same way as it did a week ago. Still, there are tales to be told, there are people to love, there are streets to hate and moments that recoil to the same place they start from. And in time everything changes with the unique capability of staying the same. To understand this paradox, to understand that the burning flames sometimes can be ice cold requires the skill of a magician. For time moves with the speed of light and achieves nothing and a whole lot simultaneously. Time breaks hearts and heals wounds; time is chained to the never ending clichés of an overtly verbal life. Alas, for all our tries and better judgement, we disregard time and its clear warnings about our futures. We bow not to the silent and invisible one, but to the shiny and vulgar that attracts the eyes. Those who are humble get nothing and are cast in the shadows of those who are rowdy and impolite. Forgiveness lingers in the misty air, ever elusive and always beyond reach.

There’s a point in this non-story where I have to stop and almost pragmatically introduce the direction my letters will take so as to keep the audiences - using plural may be a bit too ambitious, but one has to aim high. So we continue our journey inside the wondrous world of twisted realities and shattered hopes, undreamed dreams and yearning for nothing less than pure love. On this road, there are signs showing the way but they are scrambled and give no comprehensible guidance. There are maps drawn by toddlers that look more like circles of princesses than paths to an answer. In this jungle of well-stirred emotions I offer to hold your hand whilst I guide you towards the middle or the end.

There are a lot of things circling in the air. There’s our friend Bartók appearing again. There’s the idea of mortality creeping its way into every corner of the existence. There are disputes that no decaf herbal tea could ever fix. There’s a whole amalgam of ideas that circle around a Magic Mountain. All in all, there’s a chunk of time that nobody can account for, but still exists on all planes of this life.

Talking in riddles is what I do best. To solve them you have to know a lot about me. You have to be me to know what I write, which is a very bad way of trying to attract audiences. But what I feel I wrap in tin foil, store in vacuum and let out only amidst the fog of undecipherable words. What Bartók would express in musical notes, I express in written words. What Maszat would express in tail wagging, I express in allegories. What Anya would express in spoken words, I express in writing. Still, I find myself no further than where I have started from.

The boy and the girl, my dear friends Feri and Dió have moved into an apartment on Bartók street. Maszat, my dear little vizsla has become ill and had all sorts of nasty things taken out of her during an abrasive surgery. My mother, the one who I view as the most important has been hurt by my harsh words in a way that created scars, which will never heal. For this, I am truly sorry. For all of this, I am truly sorry. There is maybe no time for me to apologize, to hold a grudge, to turn my back on anything. I try my best every day and go to bed with the illusion that I have created something out of thin air. But I trip and fall and break down, just like all of us. There is no time to elude oneself with immortality no matter how attractive the idea is. Cancer grows and needs to be stopped. Harsh words leave the body and dance in the air until they reach the ear of the other and cannot be stopped. There is so much that I want to change, but I would never want to be anyone else but me.