Hovering on the edge of madness, it feels like being sick. Every sound is close, hammering on the inside of your skull and every smell is a headache that tries to escape in vomit. Faces and lightbulbs shimmer, vibrating with fever and you wish you hadn't waited until the end to make your reconciliation. All your memories are on fire, threatening to explode if spoken, so why not just let them be your ash pit...
This is the lethargy of summer, and the premonition of painful reawakening. What demons of guilt await the mind that has been lulled to sleep? That the demons should never come is the greater fear, for their absence would signify the fundamental rupture with oneself. We keep the past alive, secretly longing for that night of vast sufferings, when the wolves will rend limb from heart the justifications that soothed the uneasy rest of sloth. Howling as they consume the poisonous flesh, our attempts and endurance and eternity reveal their mocking mortality, delighting in their status as victims of time. What will remain when they have stripped us of all we thought was our creation? Human thought is but a mass grave.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Click Clock
There it goes, the time.
I am a wasteland of hours, years and months.
All their accumulated garbage in a great stinking pile
that refuses to decompose,
to become something else, better
A bowl of rice the future can eat.
But it just grows, the past.
Bigger, taller, dirtier, fouler
Sinks deeper into its own slime
Bits and pieces and memories get more indistinguishable
but never recede.
Up here, the air is bright
and the future shimmers like heat.
I would never make it that far though -
this landfill is endless
and I have too many treasures here.
I am a wasteland of hours, years and months.
All their accumulated garbage in a great stinking pile
that refuses to decompose,
to become something else, better
A bowl of rice the future can eat.
But it just grows, the past.
Bigger, taller, dirtier, fouler
Sinks deeper into its own slime
Bits and pieces and memories get more indistinguishable
but never recede.
Up here, the air is bright
and the future shimmers like heat.
I would never make it that far though -
this landfill is endless
and I have too many treasures here.
Monday, March 9, 2009
I don't understand
One day I hope
I will be able to show you
why
I am alive.
The difficulty is thick,
clods of dirty ice
I long to smash from our hearts.
Mostly
I do not understand it myself.
And then it bursts upon me like April!
in a single moment which cloisters itself
in my breast.
- a deep and timid secret, it fearfully hates
the callous human intercourse -
It is like being stabbed,
as the hot blood rushes to my face
and pools in my chest.
The small upturned face asks,
"Why are you beautiful?"
And I want to cry:
I am too weak to say,
"Because I love you."
(Cupping your cold heart,
I gently part my lips
and breathe softly,
until I weep with exhaustion.)
I will be able to show you
why
I am alive.
The difficulty is thick,
clods of dirty ice
I long to smash from our hearts.
Mostly
I do not understand it myself.
And then it bursts upon me like April!
in a single moment which cloisters itself
in my breast.
- a deep and timid secret, it fearfully hates
the callous human intercourse -
It is like being stabbed,
as the hot blood rushes to my face
and pools in my chest.
The small upturned face asks,
"Why are you beautiful?"
And I want to cry:
I am too weak to say,
"Because I love you."
(Cupping your cold heart,
I gently part my lips
and breathe softly,
until I weep with exhaustion.)
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Rejection
Standing outside the club, I handed the security guard my driver's license. She handed it back to me, saying, "Den kann ich nicht akzeptieren." I asked "Warum nicht? Mein Geburtstagsdatum steht schon d'rauf. Ich bin 21! Lassen Sie mich rein!"
She responded only more cooly, "Ich kann nur deutsche Ausweise akzeptieren."
Suddenly I had everyone's attention. People stopped dancing to crowd around the entrance of the club, trying to look at me, wanting desperately to hear what I had to say. People on the street stook awestruck as I began to shout -
"I know - Ich weiss dass ich keine Deutsche bin! Ich bin nur diese einsame, alleine Amerikanerin, und du - " I began to sob and scream - "DU! Du hast mich nicht angenommen, nicht hereingelassen!"
I took a deep breath. Now I would tell them. And they were all listening. I would make them understand, in a grand soliloquy, the depth of my loneliness. Then, they would fall into madness and exalt me as a goddess.
Opening my mouth to begin, rejection became something from which I did not want to repent. So my soliloquy became a choked cry, as I ran outside and disappeared into the black shadow of the Cathedral in front of me.
She responded only more cooly, "Ich kann nur deutsche Ausweise akzeptieren."
Suddenly I had everyone's attention. People stopped dancing to crowd around the entrance of the club, trying to look at me, wanting desperately to hear what I had to say. People on the street stook awestruck as I began to shout -
"I know - Ich weiss dass ich keine Deutsche bin! Ich bin nur diese einsame, alleine Amerikanerin, und du - " I began to sob and scream - "DU! Du hast mich nicht angenommen, nicht hereingelassen!"
I took a deep breath. Now I would tell them. And they were all listening. I would make them understand, in a grand soliloquy, the depth of my loneliness. Then, they would fall into madness and exalt me as a goddess.
Opening my mouth to begin, rejection became something from which I did not want to repent. So my soliloquy became a choked cry, as I ran outside and disappeared into the black shadow of the Cathedral in front of me.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Thoughts on Sarajevo - 11/8/08
I was cleaning my desk and found this scrap of paper, where I had scrawled the following during the train trip described in the previous post:
Sarajevo turned out to be a very interesting city, beautiful, sad, hopeful and unforgettable, and I am glad to have visited it. One the one hand, it reminded me of Ecuador, with its trash-lined streets, the grayness of its buildings where people's private lives hang in the open windows, and the vendors haggling in the streets and watching over their wares everyday for endless hours. But the grayness of cities has many sources.
Unlike in Ecuador, the face of war still hangs grimacing over Sarajevo. Some buildings have been entirely rebuilt, but most are still riddled with bullet holes and shrapnel marks. The post-war standard seems to be, "repair it to usefulness; attractiveness can come later." So, windows have been replaced and doors rebuilt, but everything else remains as it was when the shooting stopped 13 years ago.
Buildings deemed beyond repair have not been torn down, but stand as empty, ruinous reminders of a time when death lurked in every corner. The people of Bosnia have no need yet for post hoc memorials - the streets themselves, covered in shrapnel scars, remind everyone of what went before. Gaping windows tell us of a life lost. And even if you might begin to forget, the graffiti sprayed on every gray wall will tell you of your sin.
Sarajevo turned out to be a very interesting city, beautiful, sad, hopeful and unforgettable, and I am glad to have visited it. One the one hand, it reminded me of Ecuador, with its trash-lined streets, the grayness of its buildings where people's private lives hang in the open windows, and the vendors haggling in the streets and watching over their wares everyday for endless hours. But the grayness of cities has many sources.
Unlike in Ecuador, the face of war still hangs grimacing over Sarajevo. Some buildings have been entirely rebuilt, but most are still riddled with bullet holes and shrapnel marks. The post-war standard seems to be, "repair it to usefulness; attractiveness can come later." So, windows have been replaced and doors rebuilt, but everything else remains as it was when the shooting stopped 13 years ago.
Buildings deemed beyond repair have not been torn down, but stand as empty, ruinous reminders of a time when death lurked in every corner. The people of Bosnia have no need yet for post hoc memorials - the streets themselves, covered in shrapnel scars, remind everyone of what went before. Gaping windows tell us of a life lost. And even if you might begin to forget, the graffiti sprayed on every gray wall will tell you of your sin.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
A dream
I saunter out onto the tracks of the Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof, 20 minutes before my train is scheduled to leave. I stand in the cold, idly staring at the offerings of the platform's vending machine. Suddenly the conductor, a small blond woman, starts frantically yelling at me to get on the train; it's leaving right away. I confirm that it is indeed headed for Munich, and stagger aboard, bewildered. The car is almost empty. Besides me, there is only family of 3 - a mother, father and their son who can't be older than 4.
Despite the fact that we have departed 20 minutes ahead of schedule, the captain comes onto the loudspeaker at every stop to apologize for the delay. Could it be that I am on an earlier train that was severely delayed? Am I on the right train?
The trip drags on and on. We keep slowing to a crawl in the middle of nowhere, in complete darkness. The flash of a camera keeps glaring at me through a crack in the seats, as the mother seemingly is making a photo journal of her son's great Ride on the Train. He grows bored of sitting with his parents, and devises a game for himself. He divides his father's newspaper into sections, and carefully walks through the car, placing a piece of the newspaper in each empty row. Soon every row except mine has a piece of the newspaper. Then he goes back to every row and picks up the pieces of the paper, until he is holding the whole jumbled mess in his tiny arms. The process repeats endlessly, until they get off the train at Munich-Pasching. They leave behind 2 half filled Pepsi products and a few newspaper sections scattered randomly about the car. I collect these, and determine which might have reading value.
We get to Munich Hauptbahnhof about 11:20. The train for Ingosltadt doesn't leave until 12:30. I wander up and down the platform and soon bore of my newspaper sections. I leave them on an empty bench. When the train comes, I take shelter from the cold in it immediately, even though it won't leave for another half an hour. As soon as we depart, the captain comes onto the loudspeaker and says that the train has been rerouted. We will go around the entire south side of Munich before heading north to our first stop, adding half an hour to the journey. At 2 am, I finally get out at the Ingolstadt Hauptbahnhof.
A thick fog has descended over the city, and there are neither buses nor cabs. I start walking down the main street toward my apartment. It is about a 2 mile walk, and I can only see about 30 feet in any direction. Suddenly, a man in a suit comes running out of the fog toward me. He pauses when he sees me, but only long enough to say, "I'm being followed!" before he starts running again. I see a second man emerging at a half-trot from the fog, presumably the one following the first.
I dash across the street. The man passes in the opposite direction, and disappears behind me. I hear nothing of note.
About 2:30am, I am finally at my apartment door. All is as it should be.
*This series of dreamlike occurences was my actual trip home from the Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof after flying in from Sarajevo.*
Despite the fact that we have departed 20 minutes ahead of schedule, the captain comes onto the loudspeaker at every stop to apologize for the delay. Could it be that I am on an earlier train that was severely delayed? Am I on the right train?
The trip drags on and on. We keep slowing to a crawl in the middle of nowhere, in complete darkness. The flash of a camera keeps glaring at me through a crack in the seats, as the mother seemingly is making a photo journal of her son's great Ride on the Train. He grows bored of sitting with his parents, and devises a game for himself. He divides his father's newspaper into sections, and carefully walks through the car, placing a piece of the newspaper in each empty row. Soon every row except mine has a piece of the newspaper. Then he goes back to every row and picks up the pieces of the paper, until he is holding the whole jumbled mess in his tiny arms. The process repeats endlessly, until they get off the train at Munich-Pasching. They leave behind 2 half filled Pepsi products and a few newspaper sections scattered randomly about the car. I collect these, and determine which might have reading value.
We get to Munich Hauptbahnhof about 11:20. The train for Ingosltadt doesn't leave until 12:30. I wander up and down the platform and soon bore of my newspaper sections. I leave them on an empty bench. When the train comes, I take shelter from the cold in it immediately, even though it won't leave for another half an hour. As soon as we depart, the captain comes onto the loudspeaker and says that the train has been rerouted. We will go around the entire south side of Munich before heading north to our first stop, adding half an hour to the journey. At 2 am, I finally get out at the Ingolstadt Hauptbahnhof.
A thick fog has descended over the city, and there are neither buses nor cabs. I start walking down the main street toward my apartment. It is about a 2 mile walk, and I can only see about 30 feet in any direction. Suddenly, a man in a suit comes running out of the fog toward me. He pauses when he sees me, but only long enough to say, "I'm being followed!" before he starts running again. I see a second man emerging at a half-trot from the fog, presumably the one following the first.
I dash across the street. The man passes in the opposite direction, and disappears behind me. I hear nothing of note.
About 2:30am, I am finally at my apartment door. All is as it should be.
*This series of dreamlike occurences was my actual trip home from the Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof after flying in from Sarajevo.*
November
Come, small one
and gather your things:
We are unburdened now.
Let us leave this rain
to look for new rain,
and let fresh lies
bury our deceit.
Look out into the fields, and see!
How they are overturned,
and the garden plots abandoned.
We will go out from this sickness
in search of the land
where we cannot recognize hollow faces.
We are resurrected.
Beyond this grave lies another,
and the new fields full of fresh sorrows.
and gather your things:
We are unburdened now.
Let us leave this rain
to look for new rain,
and let fresh lies
bury our deceit.
Look out into the fields, and see!
How they are overturned,
and the garden plots abandoned.
We will go out from this sickness
in search of the land
where we cannot recognize hollow faces.
We are resurrected.
Beyond this grave lies another,
and the new fields full of fresh sorrows.
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