Some dreams just linger

Tonight I dreamt I was cold.

I dreamt that the bestial eyes that I saw bleeding in the sun

glared with barbarity.

I dreamt that the ruffled feathers on the ground

were carried away by a gust of irony.

I dreamt that I dreamt.

I dreamt that I woke up.

I dreamt.

Today I am stuck between the sun and the ice.

You are both. The sun. And the ice.

I am cold.

I am hot.

I am stuck.

A connection, you say.

A link.

Ice melts in the sun.

Sun light is reflected by the ice.

Don't you think?

Tomorrow I will dream.

About the sun and the ice dancing in the wind.

About you and me.

"Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice" ~ Robert Frost

The Naïveté of Dreams

 

Careful what you wish for, my friend. The worst punishment the Gods can inflict is to have one's wishes fulfilled. Sadly enough, I am convinced in the empirical sense that this saying is laden with more truth than one should assume. What harm is there to wishes, you might laugh? Believe me, wishes, ideas of perfection, mental images of the alleged personal happiness resemble naïve paintings. Not only do they lack the third dimension but also do they lack all the unknown factors that would come with what we envision. Even if it sounds hackneyed, every coin has two sides; nothing comes without a counter-part and surely – in a state of desperate desire – we will miss out on anticipating the side-effects attached to the things we wish for.

Let’s take love for example. In the absence of the latter, we become most miserable fools whining and crying for that one soul mate to rescue us. We wallow in loneliness, bathe in despair and paint colourful images of what life in love would look like. We turn an abstract concept into the key to concrete fulfilment whilst neglecting the circumstance that factual love has nothing in common with the concept itself. Surely, I am not in a position to philosophise about a great topic like that claiming to have found the one universal truth, but I can confidently assert that personally I have found the answers to my amorous questions. Love has many faces, many phases, many layers and dimensions. No love is like the other whereas the idea of love is always the same. As soon as our call of love is answered, as soon as our object of desire turns towards us mirroring our sentiments, the great generic image we carry in our pockets is perturbed with an utmost non-generic but individual reality. Two people collide and create one individual love that might fulfil everything we wished for but more probably will leave us unsatisfied in various respects. When I was a young and brash man, I was certainly and painfully aching to meet my one true love, that person that would be closer to me than anybody else and that I would hold on to forever. And, I spent a great deal of effort and many years to hunt down that person. Today, I know that the desired elements of closeness and foreverness thwarted the fulfilment of my wish. It was pretty much like chasing the horizon. With every stride you move towards it, it retreats one step.  If I had been less blinkered on my quest, I would have found out a lot earlier that distance and the sacrifice of temporal aspirations would have brought me a lot closer to my objective.

But let me return to our original topic. What I am trying to bring across is that a dream can’t turn into reality in all its details. Our brain is far too small to factor all possibilities into our equation, to consider all variables. Don’t expect life to follow the storyline of your fantasy; don’t dream to fulfil it explicitly. Dream for the sake of inspiration and motivation but be aware, life is the epitome of surprise and waywardness. Dream to move forward but don’t forget, once your dream has become true it will be a lot worse than you imagined and a lot better than you hoped for.

But now I am tired, these know-it-all monologues cost me quite a bit of energy. And, besides, who am I to judge.

"If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of potential - for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints; possibility never." ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Trial & Error.

Okay, let's face it. I want to try it all. Sweet. Sour. Hot. Bitter. Loud. Quiet. Cold. Hot. Sea. Hills. Wind. Rain. Snow. Ice. City. Pampa. Woods. Desert. Sand. Stones. Soil. Tarmac. Bicycle. Feet. Car. Bus. Train. Plane. Islands. Continents. Enclaves. Rock and Roll. Electronics. Folk. Soul. Punk. Pop. Classic. Wild nights. Quiet nights. Facts. Stories. Leisure. Work. Eduction. Science. Art. Pleasure. Despair. Success. Failure. Politics. Philosophy. Doubt. Security. Ups. Downs. Heights. Lows. Beer. Wine. Water. Champagne. Tea. Coffee. I want to try it all. Live it all. Feel it all. And, I can. I am an incredibly lucky bee, and I am well aware of it. Making use of it. I am free to taste and try everything I hunger for. And there is no need to pick a favourite, to go for one option. I can have it all. Simultaneously or consecutively. In my head, in my heart there is unlimited space for a schizophrenic potpourri that on the face of it might not constitute the perfect blend. For me, however, that's the one nuance of perfection, I am looking for. I don't need to make sense. I don't need to have a top 5 list. I can put my iPod on shuffle without batting an eye if after a Bach prelude it presents me The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Doesn't go together? Well, I doesn't have to.

How can I find out what works for me and what doesn't if I don't try it out? How can I build my personal dream and accomplish it, if there are unknown variables hovering above that I haven't figured out yet? How can I understand myself if I don't expose myself to everything tickling my eyes, my ears, my nose, my tongue, my skin, my brain, my heart? If I don't try and watch it, listen to it, smell it, taste it, touch it, think it, feel it, the unwatched, unlistened, unsmelled, untasted, untouched, unthought, unfelt blows itself up into a question mark that will haunt me forever. So, I make use of my freedom and try it out, turn it into full stops, exclamation marks and spaces. Into things to keep and things to forget. Trial and error. The good ones go into the pot. The bad ones go into the crop. That's the way I do it. That's the way I need it to be. That's my way. You don't need to understand me. Just stick around and watch, listen, smell, taste, touch, think, feel with me.

"Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life." ~ Stefan Zweig

About a sleeping muse & the sour taste of La Dolce Vita

Six months in Italy. Six months, in which I haven’t uttered, written one single non-professional word. I have been holding my breath - in synch with my dozing muse. I have been idling, hovering above myself, waiting, holding out, hoping to wake up one day with not only two feet on the Italian soil but with my heart rooting within it. A futile attempt, a futile resistance. Six months later, the moment has come to confess that the Italian ground is offering not the right blend of nutrients for my heart to strike roots. There is no one to blame, however. Neither Italy, nor myself. It is the pairing that doesn’t work, like an equation that will always show a false result.

It is a well-known phenomenon that most of the people who spent some time living in London will always look back with nostalgia. In my case it is more than nostalgia as against the backdrop of Italy’s uniformity – that in my personal case translates into monotony –London’s qualities become a necessity without which I don’t want to live. There is no black or white, I am aware of that, but there are pros that weigh heavier than others, and there are cons that are more acceptable than others. For me, the aspects of England that one can define as negative are manageable whereas their Italian counterparts paralyse my very nature. The English delights, however, are dearly missed and beat the Italian equivalents by far. I won’t name any details as this piece is not being written to highlight my dislikes and affections when it comes to these two unequal countries. Each of them is what it is; each of them has a strong character and innate idiosyncrasies. But I am lucky enough to live in the European Union where I can chose freely where to stay, and I am even luckier to be in a professional position where I can move around the globe without the need to anchor.

It was my choice to come here and try out the “Dolce Vita”, and it was me who had to find out that the Italian way of living fails to taste sweet on my tongue.

I have been thinking a lot since I left my homeland behind three years ago, about cultural imprints and differences and the concept of culture itself. It is a multi-layered, complex topic that I don’t dare to touch upon but as an emigrant I can surely say that there might be only one place like home but that there are places outside your native country that to you feel more homey than others and constitute a home-like environment made up of like-minded people, sociological reference points as well as cultural and personal compatibility.

I have come to terms with the fact that there is a possibility of me never arriving, and I am willing to simply follow my adventurous heart – like I did twice – and go back to that place on the island to experience it with my latest findings in mind. I have the feeling that this decision will bring me home, afterall my muse found her tongue the very day my English nostalgia turned into the firm plan to leave Italy behind to reconquer that city called London.

“There is no place for grief in a house which serves the Muse.” ~ Sappho



Good bye may seem forever. Farewell is like the end, but in my heart is the memory and there you will always be

Sitting in between boxes, getting ready to move to Italy, I can't help but reminisce.

I am thinking back to that day two and a half years ago when I first set foot on this island to embark on an adventure of emigration that was still unwritten. Little did I know then what to expect. My pockets were filled with most diverse sentiments, the heaviest ones being fear and anticipation. Both of them travel companions that I could have left at home - in Munich. Whilst trying to find my way in London, I learnt that nothing can happen to me as long as I trust myself and my instincts and slowly but surely fear turned into confidence. The same applies to anticipation, as how can you draw an image of something you haven't seen and experienced yet, how can you look forward to something so novel that you can't grasp it? Now I know that it doesn't make sense to look ahead and to waste energy on the absurd attempt to anticipate pitfalls and peaks, I learnt to let go and rely on myself and my talent of finding like-minded companions at every corner – no matter where I am. I am myself wherever I am and that's enough.

With another emigration ahead, I can unequivocally claim that my London adventure was worth every smile, every tear, every effort and every single minute. When I will depart in a couple of weeks with yet another one-way ticket in my hand, I will be fully laden with a million memories. And as time isn't linear and there is no difference between the past and the present, the moments that made me happy here, are going to make me happy forever.

I have met plenty of amazing people in this city and some of them have turned into true friends. London is a pool of creativity and as such hosts many brilliant minds. It is a pot of folly and individuality and has inhaled and embraced the virtue of tolerance better than many other cities on this planet. This above all is one of its most precious traits. But it has its downsides. As per the concept of superlinear scaling, the bigger the city, the more the average citizen owns, produces, and consumes - referring to goods, resources as well as ideas. We all participate in this process, manifested in the metropolitan buzz of productivity, speed and ingenuity. Doubling the size of a city increases wealth and innovation by about 15 percent but it likewise increases the amount of crime, pollution and disease by roughly the same amount.

So, no wonder London is bursting with creativity and ideas but also with their counterparts paralysis and monotony. And they walk hand in hand and create a big gap between the strong and the weak. It took me quite a bit of time to realise that something that on the face of it appears to be most heterogeneous can be very homogeneous within its heterogeneity. I also found out that the much cited fast pace of London is far away from being an abstract tale but as a matter of fact a euphemism. This place is operating in a speed that is infectious. At first, you don't realise and then somewhere down the road of acclimatisation you find yourself running instead of walking and whatever you do, you do it as quickly as possible even if there is no rush. I personally came to terms with the fact that the London pace had rubbed off on me when I went back home to visit slow and peaceful Munich. Measured against my inner London clock it felt as if the people on the sidewalks were crawling in slow-motion, and ironically enough it made me nervous.

But despite the hustle and bustle, there are plenty of friendly faces to be found here – wherever you go, a manner that also rubs off. Not so long ago I ordered a coffee in a bar in Berlin – in the London style by asking "Could I get a coffee with a dash of cold milk, please?" and the waiter looked at me slightly confused and replied "Yes, of course" - with his eyebrow raised and an insinuating question mark hanging in the air.

But in the end it always comes down to the people, no matter where you are. And also in this case, it was the people I met that turned my London experience into a chapter of excitement and inspiration. I didn't feel alone or bored one single day because I was surrounded by creatures that can only dwell in London. The density of human brilliance is certainly a result of the city's nature. But the good thing about people is that you can keep them if you want to.

And now it's time to follow the sun and my heart and focus on the next chapter of my adventurous tale. This time, however, I am neither scared nor do I try to anticipate what is going to await me there. I just pack my boxes, put on my travel boots and breath in deeply being grateful about living a life of surprises and adventure. Farewell, London and thank you for everything!

"You and me are real people, operating in a real world. We are not figments of each other's imagination. I am the architect of my own self, my own character and destiny. It is no use whingeing about what I might have been, I am the things I have done and nothing more. We are all free, completely free. We can each do any damn thing we want. Which is more than most of us dare to imagine." ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

About a wolf's head and the cave of ignorance

When I was a child I had a cactus of great stature that was placed on the window board of my room. I loved this prickly plant. Funnily enough, I thought it was the prettiest thing I had ever seen, and I often looked at it in broad daylight without the slightest fear or suspicion. It was a cactus. Nothing more. Nothing less.

But I was four years old at that time and as such rife with groundless anxieties that rose as soon as the sun set. Ghosts lived under my bed, witches in my wardrobe and ugly little goblins in my doll house. In an attempt to secure my nighttime peace, I negotiated a comprehensive code of conduct with the spirits that I believed to haunt the house. Every night I had to execute one and the same routine to make sure they weren't allowed to leave their hiding place to attack me during my sleep. It was a fairly arduous choreography that had to be completed without a mistake but once I managed to make it, I thought myself safe.

Until the day when the species of wolves entered the circle of my enemies. For one reason or another, I developed a sheer terror of these quadrupeds although my parents repeatedly promised that they had long left Bavaria to move to the neighbouring countries in the East. There is no need to mention that my parents' pledge wasn't worth a penny at night. The absence of daylight turns every children's room into a projection surface for infantile phantasies and horrors, and my imagination was as vivid as my courage was absent.

In this particular case, a wolf had settled behind the rifle-green roller blind that my parents lowered in the evening before they sent me to bed. The predator appeared as the shadow of a big wolfish head that looked so terrifying that it either deprived me of sleep or gave me horrid nightmares. This went on for a couple of months - although the childish awareness of time can be misleading here - until one day a true miracle happened. The wolf head underwent a wondrous metamorphosis and turned into a horse - an animal that I was devoted to with great affection.

I believe, it is the fear that explains why the existence of a wolf on my window board hadn't aroused any suspicion, whereas the horse head did. I looked into the matter with a first sprout of ratio and finally mustered up the courage to look behind the blinds as soon as I was sure that the horse wouldn't turn back to its wolfish state.

Today, I can't remember if I was surprised or happy to find out that it was the cactus who staged a nocturnal shadow play, and that the wolf had transformed into a horse because my mum had turned the cactus around to make sure it wouldn't lean towards the sun whilst growing.

Years later, I was reminded of this incidence of enlightenment during a philosophy class. The subject was Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" that is part of "The Republic" and, very briefly, draws on the image of objects and their shadows to examine how the human perception and denomination of matters is subject to education.

Today, I was thinking about the allegory and enlightenment in general as sometimes I find it rather boring to live in the undeceived age of education that offers scientific answers to most or let's be honest almost all of my everyday questions.

How astonishing it must have been when mankind found out that the world wasn't flat. Sometimes, I would prefer the company of questions marks and could easily do without the opportunity to turn each query into a solution by combing through the sheer infinite pool of knowledge that is out there. All I have to do is browse the books, the web and it won't take long before I am presented with one crystal clear fact or several methods of resolutions that I can then examine and apply to my liking. Wouldn't it be nice to not know things for a change? Wouldn't it be nice to be clueless and unillumined sometimes? Wouldn't it be nice to have access to the cave of ignorance? If you have the key, please get in touch.

"Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye, and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh, he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter light, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the cave." ~ Plato, The Republic

Morituri te salutant

This morning I left my house with itchy feet and a mind as light as air.

Rushing down the frosted streets, I soon felt a cold breath in my neck catching up with me and my thoughts. On my heels: myself - in the guise of a vulture not yet fully fledged.

"Run!", it crowed. "Run - as fast as you can. Until your heart leaps out of its cage so you can catch it, dissect it. So you can hold it in your hands and examine it, and look for the holes and the voids."

"Scream!", it squealed. "Scream - as loud as you can. Until your lungs jump out of your chest and your voice hits the end of the world to come back like a boomerang that cleaves your heart in two. As sometimes one heart is not enough and you need two to beat against the trials of the past."

But I stood still and swallowed my voice.

Sometimes one heart is not enough but two are too many - just as sometimes the world is too big a place but yet too small.

And what's the use of a heart if you need to split it in two for it to be great-hearted enough to revoke the phantoms of history?

What's the use of a voice when you need to send it around the world for your heart to listen?

I shook my head and resumed my walk but ever since a shadow of an unfeathered vulture has been flitting about somewhere near me.

"It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous." ~ Jean-Paul Sartre