“In order to write about life first you must live it.” – Ernest Hemingway
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21
Where has my youth gone? Did I ever experience it? Or will that come later, when I’ve grown too old to display what’s left of my vitality? A few giant worms attack an innocent southern village, white aliens send messages, and meanwhile, I’m still running after the same age-old problem.
“That means we’re stuck and that pisses me off!”
I switch to another channel. A simplistic, sexist storyline accompanies a scene.
“Oh, I love you.”
“You’re doin’ good, baby.”
I stare at the action and feel like an alien myself. I’ve reinvented myself, but that doesn’t seem to be enough; it all still feels so empty.
“I’m a damn lion, and lions mate every twenty-five minutes—time to wake up! It’s okay to dream, but every now and then, something has to happen!” It’s gotten to the point where I’m even thinking porn dialogues out loud. I turn off the light.
I ask her: “Can I disappear between your arms?” We’re standing right opposite each other, her panties disappearing between her legs, sucked into the Garden of Eden, millimeters apart; I feel her breasts gently poking against my chest; she smiles; I’m almost pressed against her lips, wanting to rest my head between her arm and her side, my hands reaching for her divine curves.
She looks away, shy, and steps out of my sleep.
I open my eyes; morning is breaking through the darkness. I close my eyes, think of her, want to seek her out, but she’s gone. I grew up with the most beautiful women in bed, only they weren’t real. The one I’m thinking of now is real, but I can’t love her; she’s too far away, too heavy a burden to bear. Still, I want to help, but…
Is it because I want to please, or is she the one I truly want, or am I just too desperate? Maybe it’s better that I find myself first, instead of constantly reinventing myself and showing how I’m not really me.
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The Matrix
March, the month of reproduction. What I feared most was my IT friend – that would be pure cramming, no logic in an exam that should be logical. After those tests, we can focus on the real work, the paper and my short film.
On the train, I tried to calm my nerves by interpreting a poem by Lucebert over and over again. I tried to enjoy his words, get drunk and forget my fears, and it helped. An hour later, I was standing in front of the asbestos-covered building called school.
A dark, long corridor sucked me towards his office, and I thought of the new wardrobe door I had ruined that morning and the pen stained with blood, caused by frantically writing down some computer diagrams on my sheet of paper, charts that wouldn’t stick in my head, I kept forgetting one link or another, a link I refused to see.
Jesus, what a bloody awful course.
Before I knew it, I was sitting in the room with him, preparing my questions, along with a few other sweating bodies, while a victim was being tortured in front of him. We saw the poor creature descend into complete self-destruction. He knew the solution, but this man sitting in front of him spoke a different language, twisted his sentences, inserted new twists and finally gave you that fatal “you’re stupid” feeling.
Immersed in the atmosphere around me, I finally ventured a glance at the note with the two questions in front of me. The first was a computer diagram, ouch, the one I had tried to memorise that morning, and the second question, yes, I could do that one.
I started on the course sheet in front of me, a sheet we had to show first, he had to check that we hadn’t written anything secretly on that scrap paper, but everything was okay, a quick glance, he seemed to trust me. When I started scribbling on my course sheet, I saw the carbon copy of the aggressively sketched circuit that I had been trying to engrave in my brain that morning. I rubbed it gently with my pencil and everything became clear to me. Oh well, that’s how it went, and I glowed with satisfaction in the classroom. All the aggression, all the fear, all the tension left my shoulders, I solved both questions with the greatest of ease, ready to face the beast.
I could still hear him saying, as he wrote 12/20 in large letters on the board and addressed us, “You have to get this to pass. If you get less than this, don’t bother me during the holidays about a possible exception.” And with a slight grin, he summed it all up again, “Less than this means you have to repeat the year.”
I saw his look and grinned back warmly this time. The next victim left the arena bleeding; now it was my turn.
With my pen as my weapon and my enlightened mind as my shield, I was ready to battle his questions. I sat opposite him with unlikely kindness, controlled and calm, a mindful Zen master. The cool, surly body from which all humanity had drained sat in front of me and asked his questions in a very monotonous tone. I got the first question right, the second question was almost right, because I had forgotten the shortcut for BAR, the Base Address Register.
Then he started with his trick questions, but I defended myself as best I could, and the last question was the most subtle: ‘What is the difference between a gas plasma screen and, for example, that fluorescent tube hanging above you?” Yes, I managed that. I began my explanation very logically, explaining how there is a difference in terms of external construction, but that there is a similarity in terms of principle.
I scored 16/20 in this subject, one of my best scores, apart from psychology, where I scored the maximum because I was able to use myself as reference material.
Oh well, he wasn’t so bad. That artefact of a would-be professional in computer science and image technology. He was quite impressive, yes, just like my score.
The biggest challenges were yet to come: making my short film, writing a paper on German Expressionism and, finally, finding a soulmate.
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The man with the rose
“Are you coming to meet Kafka?” He had a red rose next to his glass of beer. His skin was half sunken, hunched over, and his eyes were watery.
I sat next to him in the Irish Pub. The television was on, that evening the entire bar population was following the results of the Eurovision Song Contest, a show that had lost much of its original purpose but still managed to entertain.
Except for this man. We got talking, at first slightly hostile, like a schoolmaster facing a cocky youngster, but gradually our conversation became a source of life, transience, and recognition. He spoke in short fragments, his memory was far gone, and every now and then he would start quoting beautiful verses in a hallucinatory, prophetic way.
He was a writer, knew Harry Mulisch, and used to be a professor of philosophy. Kafka and Wittgenstein were his great companions in life. He called Heidegger an ‘asshole’ and mourned Nietzsche.
“I find it regrettable that people identify that man with nihilism and pessimism. No, that man is an optimist. People didn’t understand him, that was the problem!”
He was right. Nietzsche’s texts had also offered me more comfort than anger. He asked me to show him my hand, to hold it up for a moment. He looked at my fingers with fascination.
“Just like piano fingers, beautiful long slender fingers,’ and then he looked at his own, ‘thick with lots of pigment… but then again, what does it matter,” he said with a small smile.
We continued talking about Nietzsche. He saw nothing and I agreed with his nothingness, but added that there were solutions.
“Nietzsche already pointed out a hundred years ago, and before him Socrates, that we can only come from nothing to something, and from that nothing there is your own breath that you can discover and set free, or at least make your own.” That was the meaning for me, in the non-sense. Nothing more.
His drunken haze grew worse and his speech more confused. I drank along with him, at my own pace. Now the conversation turned to Kafka—whose main work I had not yet read—as I did not consider myself mature enough for it at the time.
Whenever he talked about Kafka, you could see the passion for his work streaming from his eyes. It was powerful and impressive, but apparently something in him was broken because a deep sadness lurked behind his words. When he talked about his early death, tears crawled out of his eyes like prickly scorpions, stinging violently in his decaying skin.
Finally, he wiped them away and put on his woollen gloves, without fingertips.
We said goodbye, and he asked me, “Are you going to meet Kafka?” as he took the metal hip flask from inside his coat, unscrewed the cap, and put the orange gold liquid to his lips.
A cold shiver ran down my spine, and I shook my head.
“I will never forget you, young man. Thank you for this conversation, for listening. Now, now I’m going to Kafka.”
We shook hands warmly.
“It’s a full moon tonight!” I said excitedly, looking up. He also looked up, saw this glittering sphere above him, and beamed; he understood me.
He gave the rose he still had to a woman coming out of the bar, waiting for the blush that would adorn her face. She politely nodded a thank you and threw it a little further into the trash can.
I would never forget him. Later, I couldn’t remember if this had really happened or if it was a drunken vision.
Perhaps it was a warning to myself about the power of words, words that, if you love them too much and leave no room for peace in your mind, can gradually drown you.
And he was vulnerable in that, just like the rose he gave away.
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Déjà Vu
I don’t want to go back to yesterday
when mold took over the refrigeratorand you called out to me in the pouring rain
“Do something!”While I was stuck in my father’s chair
and spoiled that great romance. -
Monochrome
the infinite looks out
on the closed windows
splashes before moving
villages hidden between
valleys of melancholy– I hardly dare to look
I am blinded by
what may always remain
until the autocratic idiot
the fungus of the ego– that festers with false promises
erases what should stay
and the valley of Angels
and muses is flooded away
fortunately, it is not (yet) so
now I hold on to what is (still) allowed– and keep looking until they pierce my eyes
pexels: photo dhruv jangid -
Farewell my friend
I see your bronze bust
on this burning spotfrom talent to star to dust
sucked up close to the peopleI smell my friend’s sweat, your scent
lost on the back of stardomI hear children cheering with delight
I hear a mother shouting: “No—stop!”The smoke of beefburgers as I descend
not far from here, the City of Angels
and stories of yesterday and todayI still see you driving
fast
-off that cliff
into the abyssI feel staggering, again
sluggish with impressions, too much
I left behind- for you, my friend
(you pull me away
you tell me what you don’t think
you do to me what you don’t say)I feel myself vanishing,
too little moisture, too much reason
holding my breath- wait for me
I who recognize you, the rebel
the fighter for the young skin,I taste the silver
on my lips
just a moment longer –
I fall
I taste the stench
that drives me,
that keeps me upright, my friend
and you who shouts:
“Drink, drink as much as you can!”Leave me alone, just like him,
I don’t want to go back,
you who say: “Hang in there.”I who think – you filthy bastard,
I love you, but now it’s enough,I can still see myself driving
into the abyss
fast- from that cliff
smiling like Brando and Dean
farewell, my friend.For Dean @griffithobservatory
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Resistance
There they stood
arm in arm
as if it had always been that waythis Tristan and Isolde
she, mother and father
the one 10 years olderwhen the virus came
and he saw the world change
even before egos decidedthat war is necessary, that people
are cattle for slaughter, ‘cause machines
must roar, weapons must clatterand turn blood into gold, silver
words from those who see through the charade,
lie still, he grew a decade older
now they are standing there,
different from when I was a child,
hand in hand, hand in hand. -
How do you keep going on?
I cross the street, iron monsters surround me, throwing their poisonous gases into my eyes and filling my lungs, heavy as lead. That’s how I feel now, I want to get away, away from the grind, away from the smell of everyday life, let me write, writing is not dying, writing is wanting to live, but not out here?
I ask the old man next to me at the bus stop: “How do you keep going, how can you live in this world, or do you even realize you’re alive, maybe you forgot that long ago? Forgetting, is that the solution?”
He looks at me as if I asked him where the bakery is, shrugs his shoulders, and continues reading his newspaper.
So that’s how it should be done, you just ignore the fact that you exist. Ignore the fact what is happening and just, eat, work, sleep…
Fastfood romantics 