Revert

Revert to: whatever learned ways to cope.

I talk to him. I listen to Maroon 5 (odd decision). I go out to treat myself to questionable luxuries.

I know the better way. Today I am lazy. Today I do whatever, take short cuts. Delay other things.

I think of my wife and olden LA days. What is that? What is it, that draws me to this time?

In Los Angeles I was seeking. I delved down the avenues. I ran against walls and into abysses. Yes, in the plural. I soared high, in some ways, I sharpened skills and got to know the world and myself better. I learned about love and breaking. I saw you.

The puppet player keeps coming back to my mind. The way he moved his puppets, the fierce look of passion and concentration on his face. On Franklin Strip. How we sat down with him after his performance to drink some wine and learned about his loss. The girl I met months later in a taxi to the airport in Alberqueque. The wooden floor in Miles' townhouse. The interior design in that living room. Us dancing to the old school hip hop LPs he put up. Us dancing, dancing away.

Me lying in the bathtub at the hostel as the party went on. Listening to the sounds of people dwindling. The floating.

That night when my wife and I went with him to the hidden cove in Malibu, red tide.

I guess I want to seek refuge, I want to find a place to unwind and let go. To completely forget for one minute and reconnect with the unspoken. The dreadful honest love. 

Walking the Line

Man, it's hard not to fall into negativity. I can feel my lungs collapse in shame. My shoulders hunch, just a hint, and my chest constricts in pain. Not again!
Trying to breathe deeply is not easy in this body.
So I try to straighten it and open it and the emptiness that ensues in my ribcages and in between my heart and my lungs is deafening. I try to fill it with adequate emotion, invite it in. See the cracks in the cloud wall! There is a bird flying. I hate people. My chest sinks back in.

At the check-out counter I hum and tap gently on my chest bone. I can feel the vibration of my voice. Hummmm, hummm. There is a faint smile as I remember how embarrassed I was whenever my Mom sang in the supermarket.

The street is half dusty and half muddy. I jump over a puddle in my cowboy boots and hope my red skirt doesn't stray.

Yes you can do it! So cool! A challenge!

Learning to walk was so much more fun when I was a kid and fixated on my goals. Nowadays I get threatened to be thrown off by demons and dragons that try and conquer my soul.

Transforming them then it is.

Youth

I remember when we went to study for our final exams. It had snowed and we did sauna in Todtnau Berg at her Grandparent's vacation apartment. After midnight Chris and the crew stood in the door, he had come with his VW bus and we tied sleds to the bumper and raced through the sleeping village, him driving, us almost dying of laughing.
Later we all crashed, on couches, the carpet, the beds and Moon Palace and the red wine were forgotten. A couple weeks later the dust particles danced in the streaks of sun rays that flooded through parts of the window in the apartment where she lived together with the carpenter apprentices my sister was so infatuated with. I used her shaver and she hated me and then we couldn't stop laughing about one of the cartoons in the bathroom.
We visited someone in the other apartment, it was the cool kid apartment basically, full of punks and outlaws who hung out at the place they had goa and trance parties. They listened to the Pixies and a myriad of bands I had never heard of. Hanging out became a thing then, I got the hang of it, literally. The hours we spent at the river bank trying to understand vectoral equations and the time when she was sick and I took care of her because her parents lived in Switzerland.

Chris raced through forest dirt roads and then took a right onto a meadow and we almost crashed in a ditch. The bus jumped so high, that we bumped our heads hard against the ceiling and coming down was a hard crash. The adrenaline drove us almost mad, I begged Chris to stop, he thought it was funny. We slept in the bus and in the morning there were frost stars at the window and we got to school in our crumpled up clothes and unbrushed teeth. Johannes and I would take off to the train station in the 20 min break sometimes to get a coffee. He smoked, I didn't. He listened to the White Stripes and the Strokes and knew all the Pink Floyd albums by heart. We philosophized about a lot of things but I have no recollection of what we really knew. Sometimes we'd skip an English class and I'd buy a Machiato in the new Italian coffee shop and read a book in the back, sitting at the window, feeling a tinge of eternity.

you

It is true, what my Mama said.

"Get used to the thought, that you will always love him."

So it is. There will always be moments that bring you back to me. Only sometimes I wonder if the same happens to you or how you remember me.

I know that we were intensely beautiful.

People would stop us in the streets and say "ya'll stay together!" or "you look gorgeous together" or "if that isn't true love"... It is good to have lived that. It is good.

I still love you, I love what you touched inside of me. I love what you let me touch inside of you.

Now is a different time. I am getting ready for the next encounter.

The Beat

Not always things come together.

First of April is approaching, and it is four years ago now that I fell into an abyss of the unknown. Sometimes it seems as if it is a long and winding road. Not the easy way out, at all.

Love is trying to capture images that once moved. Love is trying to seep through. People move. They move. They move on. Only sometimes I freeze and access layers of the known unknown.

The Beat.

Is still coming through. It's still coming through. Breaking walls once shattered then rebuilt. Berlin is mixing with young Hollywood nights. My wife and Sean. You and then Him. Relationships break, transform, die and sometimes, people die but the relationships to them don't.

The Calling

B is playing the piano like the Goddess she has always been to me, in her vulnerability and soft strength. S is singing with her and I listen to a Seal song that takes me over the edge, its rhythm shaking the darkness and the cricket's choir. My body moves, following the pulse and I know: this is where I come alive. There is no denying it. Like when I dive into depths of human interaction and feel excitement of discoveries open my wings.
My mind flies swiftly, spanning thousands of miles and an entire continent to reach Moscow within a mili-second. Ruth comes to mind and her circus performance with this electro artist. The community of artists beckoning me strongly. I stand so strong and tall, when I fall I rise from the rubble, I see where I can learn. And I grow. But the itching inside doesn't become any quieter. The Soul Kitchen is just around the corner, we will come together and share, foster a community of sharing stories, music, dance and poetry. We will feast. And my mind will come back from Russia, it will shake off the longings and thirst and indulge in the evening. I will continue standing tall and take steps of courage and creating a pathway.

Moscow, your hidden jazz bar and the dark and the dirt and your circus and music artists will have to find me, down the road. Maybe it's not silk acrobatics, maybe it is just tight rope walking. More than that it is really creating stories incorporating your magic. I can't hide for much longer.

The Missing Link

For a moment I could see it unfolding - I could see myself walk that path, grow professionally, become that person, step into a certain kind of greatness, a path that feels incidental, random, chosen and destined all in the same time.

But there is more than that.

The moment I realized the need to sharpen the pencil, when what I want is paint with my hands, was when I saw it all transform in front of my eyes. I can't deny my artistic nature. I can't deny that I love to do things the way I want to do them. I can't deny, that polished is not my mark.

I have to step into more chaos, messy creativity, stormy action. Then I can refine and dive and use all the tools I have acquired here. But I can't keep on forever going only on that path. I don't see how I can channel all this through one needle's eye. It seems almost impossible.

There is way more open.

it is old rags
i shuffle my feet
music has always welcomed me
i dive deeper
i find blood and flesh
broken into pieces like glass
looking through the rearview i catch a phrase
it sings your name
and speaks of love
that now has sunken deep deep deep into the coldest ocean
where humpbackwhales feast
and hum
you looked back twice
over your shoulder
sending hurt and smiles
all the same

it is new depths
i wade through now
gathering my belongings under my feet
he is begging at my door like an orphan
crying with fear of self in his palms
when he sweats i hear whispers
they poke holes through the layers of past
shake the view so i can see the pile
of trust rubble outside my window
where nothing can grow except for
love
but it sleeps under the rocks
dreaming of pearls of sweat
that slowly peruse all
all all all

it must be a one way street
a detour a mistake
i shouldn´t feel this way
shaken by burn of jealousy
rocking my mind
grabbing my heart in one instant
to laugh with a shrieking sound at the next
you surely didn´t mean any of this to be
but certainly it may make you feel
more free
the dice have rolled and cards have changed
you can take a deep breath now and
refuel
while i sit here to nurse my stronghold of feelings
to make it bold
bold bold

it may be insignificant but it does make me wonder, i must admit.
how i thought of him when i lay in your arms. how his whisper made me shudder. how i knew from the start that there would be something.

i can´t speak my mind.
i remember that night, when i felt love filling my lungs.
i plunged.
it´s been a long time. now, on adventurous roads, i can feel the tectonic plates shifting. they shake my mind. i am filled with fears i had buried so well. now they are bound to break open, jump, leech.
i want to crawl somewhere and just wait. maybe die. just wait it out. shame and frustration and sadness and sorrow, anger and hatred and gut wrenching longing is destroying my intestines, my lungs, my heart.
can´t i just let it go?
it´s hard. and who can i share this with? it is entirely my business now, isn´t it?
i want to stumble into your heart.
i want to be graceful like a butterfly. solemn and earnest and strong and fluid yet disciplined like a dancer. filled with joy joy joy!!!!
joya!
joy!

i am so ashamed
somehow
that i have to come to this place
in obscurity
i guess i just wanted
to pick another body
another life
another moment in time

your precautions are deliberate and i know you got your reasons.

this is a brutal collision between fantasy and reality. sometimes i think i have been like this already as a child. your eyes scrutinizing and gauging: you understand. sometimes paths diverge but then they merge again and i feel safe in the space you stake out for me. when you stake it out for me. sometimes i fall apart, my mind takes a life of its own and i have to submerge and recreate the situation: you understand. your gaze is haunting my waking memories. the way you carefully pronounced these words, giving your insights shape and form. do you hear me? or are you caught entirely in your web of sensations? sometimes we break through and there we are, flaming into the sky.