September Rain

life is complicated.
i can't remember the taste of your passion, the color of your lust or love
your lips, i forget, i can remember the sensation but not the feeling, the physical circumstance but not the soul
your eyes, squinted, glancing at me from across the navy blue volvo, a vibrant smile seated in your soul, images popping up but as if worked into stone, a memory petrified, a legend before the fall.
maybe it is really better this way, your distant plea to let you know how I am doing and your sad news about your dad make my heart beat a little faster and breathing a little harder but all in all it just feels like the sound of rain on the roof, nothing big, I feel sorry and I pray but I don't let you know how I am doing.
What would that give you, anyways. The stories about the angel girls, the heart break of the oldest, her confiding in me and how much that trust meant to me? The way the two youngest jumped in my arms and wouldn't let go. The shy adolescent difficulties of the second one and the way her big toe looks like. Not better than any other gossip you can find in any boulevard magazines, nothing that would mean anything to you and your life now. Only when I talk about you and how much you love children and how great you are with them I feel my heart constrict for a second and I almost forget the pain you caused and the enormous amount of strength needed at some point to not smash windows, her fuckface and your jaw. To see you lying in the dirt, in the gutter and spare my spit because it is too good for you. Your faded love can't find its way into my memories anymore, only images of your chest and your strong arms and the way I could fit into you still vibrates a little bit with life. Making love to you, as well, a petrified legend. Only faintly I recall the way you made me break down the last walls and let go in a whirl of love, waking up in the dark from a dreamlike storm that left me shivering and united our souls. But that was when and Starbucks at La Brea around the corner from that Mc Donalds and the Wu Shu Kung Fu national training center is way more real than this could ever be. That woman who wanted to learn German and get a massage. I still have her card. That day when I went to Big Bear and left you behind with a blank cheque for the case of emergency. You wanted to buy me a Christmas present with it later, which was, of course, so ironic, even though I would have appreciated it, nonetheless.
Things just never got going, dear, and I have written way too much. Life is complicated, as such.

yes, Christmas

yes, yes, so it is! Christmas approaching and I still with no clue about other religions really. not to speak of the one who covered the festival of the new rising sun with a new meaning.
the sun was shining today, it was shining into the room i was sleeping in and reminded me of the winter solstice yesterday. it reminded me of other days, peace filled, with a view on pink trees, hummingbirds and palmtrees. i remember the love, the essential pain, the hurt, the beauty, the joy. i remember everything.
it runs through my veins like venom, smooth, slow, numbing my nerve endings, swaying me to a sleep beyond the moon.
see, if you look closely now you see the layers. winters, christmas eves, snowhills, fogs and songs. a little girl trying to discern the milky way amongst stars. an uncle yodeling in the blackest of forests. a teenager trying to hold back, a star breaking down in the midst of night, a story untold.
you will find it all.
you will find it all.

specks

are you writing piranha says he in his deep voice. almost guttural, really, and gay.
i don't know, i swallow down superfluous spit and saliva and count the silk threads in my night gown. reality is stranger than fiction. it really is.
later she sits on my little 10 buck carpet from the former GDR and noisily sips something from a large white tea cup in her hands. i am surprised at the fact that it doesn't annoy me. a short moment i stagger and think of craft. people who craft pottery and words. she stretches her legs and smiles. really nice people she says and i can hear in her voice that she is impressed.
he will go about his evening. it could be a peaceful, fun, undramatic evening. other people will be dying in snowstorms. others will be making love.
and my friend's man is dying.
dying more often. every time again when another doctor robs him of a hope which another person instilled inside of him.
dying thereof.

which way will you take now my friend. the streets are icy and cold. accidents happen all along the routes. and no one is safe.
i feel your heart beat flutter against my breath now.
i feel your fingers in my mind. i feel how my soul is caught inbetween.
which way will you take now my friend. i am tired and would like to lay down and get some rest. leave the things be that scream at me to be done and finished.
saturday sun is on its way.
early early morning. and you, you,
blue

doing this for you

i'm doing this for you, even though you don't know who I am.
I'm doing this, because it is hard to sit here and just bear the moment.
The close drawing in, frightening me, leaving me ambiguous, at the edge of a sword silver and gold.
Listening closely I can hear my heart say 'no' pretty clearly but situations can be so fucking awkward sometimes.
It makes you cringe and want to crawl back in some ancient misty moisty autumn cave to lay down for the winter and sleep till the sun comes back.

wailing

strange trippy sounds woke me up. Jeanne said that I muttered something about Mira but I'm not sure whether I was worried that my phone went off in her room or whether she actually cried.
It was silent in her room. I opened the door to the flight of stairs outside our apartment. A wailing voice filled the space with murky creepy echoes, sounding surreal and not from this world. Shuddering I listened like under a spell, trying to collect my terrified mind, all splattered on the staircase floor. I hurried back to Jeanne, 'do you hear this' I asked her breathlessly, and we cocked our ears, listening to that ghostly voice, unsure of where it came from. 'Listen!' I whispered, 'it's in English!' It almost seemed as if it was coming from the outside. The street looked pale and grey and empty though.
And it seemed absurd that it should be in English and that someone was actually going on a wailing rant without pause, after midnight.
It stopped suddenly. I felt as if in a slow motioned bad dream to wake from seemed impossible. When it kicked back in, now coming from a different direction, I felt how it sent a chill down my spine, lamenting, penetrating walls and doors and floors effortlessly, filling every corner of this God forsaken house.

Then the actual drama unfolded before our ears. We heard steps, unsure if from the flat above or below, things being moved around noisily, thrown against walls and loud thumps, rumbling - scary sounds, intersected by that same voice, shrieks and cries.
Jeanne cuddled back into her downs but I couldn't sleep. Everything was so gray and spooky. Went back to the door, listened, realized that it came from below where our cranky, unfriendly, drug dealing neighbor lives. Involved in what seemed a relentless and desperate battle in a strange language that I didn't recognize.
Like a shadow I scurried back to our room. We both didn't know what to do. What to do?
I think the police came later, knocking hard and brutally against her door. We shuddered.

The stairs were so gray, dark and vast. Murmuring of forgotten tragedies and tales of ordinary madness. The War, - the little private wars. Blood on the steps and lynch mobs hunting a young mother and her children in 1945. The old lady, now dead, from downstairs vegetating alone, the then young couple from 0303 being the only ones to take care of her about 30 years ago.
The young angry woman who seems to be between worlds. So many worlds. Too many worlds - a gray shadow living amongst us, day in day out. A gray insignificance who was rising to existential expression in these murky minutes, filling the house with all the unspoken tragedy with the wailing voice of a night shadow.


In the morning I read Persepolis when suddenly Noir Desire flowed into the kitchen from Jeanne's room, filling the space with strange magic, almost as if from yet another world. Tying knots, connecting dots, waving the wailing ghosts of last night into a strange carpet of unknown depths and melancholic delights.
life : lyrical.

synchronity takes overhand. and i am trodding the mill.
a few inspiring words are all that is needed.
the realization that empiristic methods are not all there is.
some people make you wonder.

Schall und Rauch

he was surprised I didn't study politics. he didn't listen when I introduced myself. what captures his attention was the fact that my mom is from Alaska.
ALASKA! he exclaimed.
WHY DID YOU LEAVE???

it is something past two PM.
Kolja buys lunch and he arrives a little late.
sits down at the table with us. looks at me, putting his notes to the side.
you have an amazing capacity of capturing people's attention he says. takes a sip of his lemonade. you put a spell on them.
a tiny smile creeps up but i know what comes next.
you lose yourself he says and straightens his jacket, his hands like mini irons, trying to get rid of those creases and wrinkles.
i nod. i know. i felt it happening.
his hands are quiet now.
he explains the routine. the images to support the word. because, words can dissolve into Schall und Rauch. soundwaves and smoke. the creative part. do it outside the classroom. go directly to the place and present there. a didactic method other than powerpoint. but not completely without.
i nod. i know. i searched but i paralyzed myself successfully. drowned in making dinners, cleaning up, dreaming, masturbating, and all.
i hang my head because i know.
i know. i know.
i've always known.
what, if you can't back your charisma. it isn't worth a dime.
and words pass when you don't give them the time of their day.
when you don't rever them properly.
when you just hold them together with these tiny pearlstrings of energy.


he looks at me with these incredible eyes. understanding and challenging in the same time. asks me why. and there are a lot of lame ass excuses.
later he buys me a coffee and then leaves hastily to his next thing.
Kolja says I have to see everything in context.
Later he asks me if anyone has ever told me what an amazing woman I am.
I laugh, or maybe cry, it might be shallow but it sure feels good to hear a man say that to me. it's been a long time
and inside I feel I am at the verge of losing my shit.
living schizophrenically. slithering along. trying to avoid major accidents.
holding onto amnesia. trying to forget everything i know that makes life impossible right now.

the morning after brings fresh linen. white, fluttering in my mind.
somebody hung my laundry, neatly, in rows. even my underwear. how intimate!
and on the windy platform of Wollankstreet is a Roma or Sinti girl, dressed in jeans, sturdy black shoes and a shiny black leather jacket. her hair is tied back loosely, in a ponytail. it has different stringy shades of brown and black. she is wearing an accordion on her back. she isn`t really carrying it. it seems like a part of herself. contrasting the western clothing style but she is wearing it with such implicitness, or how they say in the dictionary, "like a duck takes to water".
when she arrives i have already screened all present people stomping their feet on that platform waiting for their train to come. i catch her eye for a second but look away faster than I am proud of.

it is windy. freezing. frosty. she rummages in her pockets and pulls out a piece of writing that was folded somewhere in the depths of her shiny leather jacket. she reads it with such concentration, moving her lips as she moves along, that I get sucked into it too and can´t divert my eyes from her stillness.
I miss my train but she catches hers without even looking at the signs.

We both enter the train. Alone.

i get it

yo, i get it.
damnit.
i get that you buy a fucking xmas tree. your first xmas tree. together, i take.
i get that you cooked thanksgivingdinner for everybody.
i get that you are fucking loved and happy.
you must be. it must be going very, very well.
maybe it just takes the right woman to make a man. or the right mother. uhh, well.
i also get that you are really trying to rub it in my face. . maybe, you don't.
maybe it's me headbutting that ginormous piece of shit you piled on.
voluntarily.


you know. when i'm thinking about it properly. I get that: I haven`t really given myself enough space to complain. i need to go in a park and just complain for a couple of hours. i mean, no, days. complain. say it how it is. just cut through the whole 'understandin' part of it. just...eff that shit. you know? complain about assholes. specific ones, general ones. about getting f§$%ed in the ass. all that. and then, you know, just breathe in, breathe out,
and go home.

i think i get THAT, too.

breaking

it is really cold. i cut two holes in a pair of socks and turned them into something like gloves. head scarfs make a lot of sense now, not only in my part of town.
i am listening to Sandro Perri from Toronto oh he is quite something else, fitting into this weather like a fist in that girl's face.
clouds of worries tower above me. i can barely breathe. money is running low these days, my priorities dubious. i sigh.
things of worrisome nature creep into my brain, such as, whether or not i should reach out to him and ask him to help me out. because he owes me. but then, is it worth the hassle? the tangle? i am already tangled up in blue. doubt, that i need more confusion and anger on that fragile ice i have managed to build up so far to cover up this lake of tears.
pathetic sounding. but still, it smells like smoke in this dingy internet cafe. one step after the other i tell myself and keep typing my petty life away.
it isn't all that bad, i tell myself. i have many options. and i am oh so scared to fuck them up. haven't felt like that for quite a long time. what a luxury to have a convenient, safe job that feeds you well.
to do what you love, because you have time for it, and yet don't have to live off it.

now it's a different story. the dirt has seethed into my own pillows. it's me now struggling in the streets more so than i ever did in the backstreets of hollywood.
it was a hard life then, and i worked hard, but the uncertainties were of emotional nature and not so much about whether or not i would be able to eat.

eff you too

it trickles in, fast, not slowly. i get annoyed, antsy, irritated.
you smell off a life that makes me sick to my stomach. cook for everyone, go ahead, be a family that i never was.
ha. ironic, how i felt i couldn't take the iconization of one person but swallowed it from the other. how i swallowed and swallowed and never came myself to reality.

well. you and your pretentious books, your insider knowledge, your scope of love and life. i can only look upon it like the poor kid catching a glimpse of the loaded x-mas tree in the good neighborhood mansion. i might not even be poor. i might be an onlooker at the side of the street, watching the emergency guys pick up the pieces of bodies which were mingled up in an obscene orgy, just minutes ago. maybe i am a ghost howling in the rusty pipes in a NY loft, caught in the wrong time, wrong place, wrong fucking scene.

angry i put the ashes down and inhale deeply.
does it free me?

emerald

it´s dark and stormy, the wind is whipping my face, tangeling my hair and blinding my sight.
my glasses all teared up, the rain almost frosty hail, cutting flesh and thoughts into pieces.
on my way home i ride along the little smushy river. it is surrouned by surreal looking trees, characters out of a gloomy, somber fantasy dream.
there is a feeling swelling in my chest. it gathers itself from a formless mass into a howl that disrupts my masks and brickstone walls and tenement halls in one forceful blow that echoes in the wild pangs of the stormy wind afflicting its love upon the earth.
a small, solitary light appears in the obscure. it´s dangeling from one side to the other, soon a silhouette emerges, a lonesome bike rider in the night. as she passes I shout a hello! like a crystal clear bell my voice rings through the tempest, my feet soaking wet, my eyes half blind against the pouring rain.
long gone, the forlorn person just images in my mind now. but the pure joy that suddenly breaks through in a brilliant smile lets the night disappear in miliseconds. the single moment of hello between complete strangers of a grey city, in a stormy night, brought back the innermost awareness of
I AM