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.

The bridge of San Luis Rey

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

Dear Old Friend

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

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

Old Loves and Dreamy Eyes

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

Far, far, far

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

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

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

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

Táncház

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

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

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

Autumn

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

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

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

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