I think I’ll call it love…

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

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

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

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

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

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

And they feed you lies…

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

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

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

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

Japan

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Amalgam of Ideas

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

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

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

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

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

Dan's Words

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Good morning," said the roses.

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

"Who are you?" he demanded, thunderstruck.

"We are roses," the roses said.

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

Do You Remember?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conversation in Heaven

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What about our mother?

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

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

There is no pain here.

The swelling’s gone from my arms and legs.

There is no pain here.

Your heart is silent.

My dear sister, there is peace here.

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

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

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

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

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

Random notes on the happenings of this week

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

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

I almost forgot

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

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

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

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

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

Death of a Salesman

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

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

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

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

Jewel and Me

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://www.jeweljk.com/

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.