Fractions

   'The power of love'. Have truer words ever been written or sung?

   Who wouldn't, yes, couldn't agree? Inspiration for too many breathtaking love songs, starting point for about each and every single piece of literature or art ever crafted by humanity. Groundwork for human existence, interaction, evolution.

  Too much pathos? Too exaggerated? Give it a second thought.

  Wars have been provoked by love. Empires obliterated for it. Look closely, and its evident ambiguity can be found among the seemingly pleasant notion we attribute to this state of the mind that forces its way into every fiber of the human soul with either good or malicious intentions. A less metaphorical Fall of Men. And no matter what, we fall hard. Take a bite, taste the sweetness, embrace the unspoiled bliss.

  Mmmmhhhh.

  Wait just a tidbit too long and foulness takes over, clasping the rotten odor of decay, covering the appealing splendor of seduction. Refuse to partake of the temptation and regret missing out for the rest of your life.

  Straight on, Tennyson. 'Tis better to have loved and lost...

  You know the deal.

  The lost loves. A myriad of possibilities. Lovers, sure. Loved ones. Worse. Hopes. Dreams. Life itself? Devastating.

  Another death, another progressive, incurable illness, another life-crucial impossibility, another, another, another. It adds up.

  And that's it.

  The flip-side of the coin.

  Love.

  It's a game-changer. THE game-changer. Stop lying to yourself it doesn't affect you that much, doesn't change you, doesn't rip your heart apart each and every single time. Doesn't disintegrate that artificial personality made up of social adaptation and sincere inner needs into a cyclone of millions of microscopically small components helplessly floating around in the vacuum of your love-tormented mind.

  It fucking DOES.

  If you're lucky you pull yourself through it. A few setbacks included, give or take. Lick your wounds, mend those scars. Cover them up, maybe hide them beneath the physical ones. We all carry them anyway.

  If not...

  If not you screw up. Badly. Drinks. Cigarettes. Add the occasional stupid decision that seems so appealing in the now but lets you sink to the bottom of a gloomy sea in the then, another dark passenger haunting those last remaining sparks of sanity, mingling with the shadows already there, taking your breath, a noose around the neck tightening by the minute, swallowing what's left.

  Don't ask.

  You hang around in bars and clubs.

  Get high on music until the point you are afraid you might collapse because of the sheer ecstasy of it. Pushing yourself further by the minute until you finally fall for it with all your might, fading out your wretched feelings. A cloud of three-four times to dive head first into, unafraid of shallow waters, Les Paul siren songs that fill your mind with the ease of hummingbirds, a constant drumming heartbeat that sets the irregular pace for emotional survival.

  Temporary palliation.

  You exhaust yourself. To the point where food and sleep become a mere distant memory.

  You outright open up to complete strangers to get it all of your chest because you can't stand hurting the ones you love anymore. The sad faces, the sympathetic words, the well-meaning. They care before they despair... nothing but drops in the ocean as they know as well as you do.

  You change. Withdraw. Pretend. Act.

  Afraid of being recognized as the weird, hurting, fading likeness of your former self that you have turned into. And you excel.

  Darkness has always been comforting. The darkest darkness, the one you only find in small town suburbia, far from fluorescent streetlights or multistory apartment buildings that try to suck your tormented soul straight from your heart. How strange.

  Right on the dam overshadowing the river, caught between some bushes and the occasional oak tree. Just a stone's throw from your home yet far enough to forget its sheer existence. Here you can dive in, blend in, feel its protective coating draped around your shoulders. The beauty of a pitch black night. As appealing as it was at the age of 10. Now offering more than the mind boggling fascination and awe you felt as a kid when you snuck out of the house in the middle of the night. Shelter. Peace. Calming you down.

  Breathe out.

  Let your thoughts wander.

  Forget.

  And nights become days.

  You can feel it slipping from your grip. 'It' being it all. Frosted glass panes wherever your gaze trails. You're going blind. Losing touch.

  Desperately waiting for a light at the end of the tunnel.

  Till then...

  I'm empty and aching and I do know why.

Off and Away

  The perks of traveling solo.

  Forgotten and absorbed into the back of my mind for the last nine years, which seem to have passed in the blink of an eye. And they did, as complete contentment has this ominous tendency to blur perception in more ways than imaginable.

  The journey is the destination.

  I zen out at airports the moment I get there. Especially being on my own. No cellphone or some kind of portable stereo needed. I observe. Blocking out the buzzing noises of those who perceive boarding a plane as a mere way of getting from A to B, a necessary obstacle lying between them and their well deserved one week summer vacation in an all-inclusive beach resort on the Balearic islands.

  How pathetic.

  For me it's my first personal oasis, which seems to drive those in a hurry, whose seats have been overbooked, flights canceled or passports misplaced, crazy, or at least suspicious. You win if you're on your own, relaxed, and well prepared. Venturing on a three-leg flight to save up some money? Sure. A two-hour delay on the first leg? Great, less time to kill in Heathrow, which despite the not so recently added Terminal 5 is still a pain to be at. An overnight layover? You may not be a careless youngster anymore but then you're not too old for that either, and sleep is overrated anyway while crossing one time zone after the other. Plus you can't possibly get used to the exaggerated use of A/C early enough. So you simply stoicly deal with every obstacle bestowed upon you, one by one – it all being part of this one ongoing experience called travel.

  Each journey starts with that single insignificant step out of the door, the moment one breaks the cycle of daily routine by abandoning worn-out paths and striving for the unknown. Sounds too dramatic? Engraved in a marble plate placed at the wall of a narrow brick building I discovered Calvino's wisdom: 'Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign unpossessed places.'

  Not exactly the way Campbell or Vogler defined it, but still some kind of hero's journey blueprint.

  Call me old fashioned; I still believe in experiencing, yes, feeling a place by walking its streets without looking every damn second on a phone or map, but instead heading down into the madness of being comfortably lost all on your own in an unknown environment. To be reset. It's then you find not only the time, but most importantly the inner peace and serenity to reflect on yourself. To get a break from the rush of our daily lives.

  Doing so I spent more than two hours on a bright Saturday morning walking the winding paths of the Allegheny Cemetery, stopping at a certain mausoleum or sculpture now and then while startling an unsuspecting groundhog looking for food between the countless gravestones neatly arranged next to each other. The sunshine on my face, a soft breeze sweeping up the sloping hills lined with oak trees, casting some welcome cool-down shades in the blazing heat around noon. I kept on walking lost in thoughts until the dust in my throat reminded me to turn my back on the dead and return to the likes of me. I felt complete.

  You don't do this stuff unless you travel alone. There is no one there to interrupt your thoughts, distract your perception – you just open up your eyes and see. See what's there. Unfiltered. Your opinion. Your impressions. Taking in the little things you might otherwise miss.

  During a single week abroad I walked endless hours and way more kilometers than I would have in an entire month back home. Had more inspiring conversations with complete strangers than I could have wished for. The ones you thirst for. The ones you never fully engage into while being with someone else. Being more approachable, more open to new experiences. Being more... you.

And so it happened that I met Sergey, a local photographer, who not only recommended a couple of great, not too well known locations to shoot at to me, but also retold me the story of his life within forty minutes on a packed sidewalk in the middle of the Strip. I philosophized about the art of beer brewing, acted as a professional photographer for a couple that celebrated their engagement on Mt. Washington, and ended up talking about arts, traveling and God and the world for more than an hour to a local artist named Bob whose work has become a local landmark.

  To name a few.

  Like a wolf smells its prey across a distance of two kilometers, single travelers sense each other, got an eye for those on their own as well. Eager to make connections, to communicate, connect, to escape the restrictions of your inner mind, something you eventually aimed for in the first place. I didn't expect to solve some of societies recent problems by the second round of beer in the middle of the night on a plane between America and Europe while talking for five hours straight to a well known ukrainian pianist who happened to be seated next to me.

  That never happens to you. Unless you're on your own.

  The best part about traveling solo though?

  Coming back home to your significant other, being hugged and kissed and told how much you were missed. The inner certainty that every spatial separation brings you closer together, even after nine years... at least for a while.

Eastbound

167,8 km of wired fence was all it took. One huge barrier erected within days to divide first only a city, then a country and finally a continent for more than 28 years. Add another 30 years (realistically maybe 50, but I'd rather like to sound like an optimist than a realist) to get that spatial separation between East and West out of people's heads. Ironically – no – sadly, the aftermath of every war, cold or not, always outnumbers the immediate pain it caused in the first place. Or so it seems.

   So while a wall can be physically torn down, maybe even vaporized, its mental self still ghostly lingers around for a while. Walking the streets of Berlin you won't find much left of what originally used to be The Wall. There aren't plaques on every other piece of concrete retelling it's history but if you know your way around, retracing the geographical layout of that infamous barrier between what people provocatively called The Free West and everything beyond the equally sensational named Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart in your head, you don't need them anyway. The soil, or concrete, or bowldering beneath your feet soaked with history. Listening closely you may sense the tears people shed, the lives they lost there, the pain and sorrow they felt. The perversity of human capabilities. 

  “Niemand hat die Absicht eine Mauer zu bauen.”

   Driving down the A2 to Berlin, right after crossing the border between Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, you pass Helmstedt-Marienborn. The gently sloping hillside forest finally opens up, turning into a flat plain scenery filled with green pastures and neverending undulant wheat fields, roofed by a deep blue sky as far as the eye can see. Several hordes of white lances divide the rural idyll, seemingly misplaced. Another wind park. One turbine next to the other, as you can find them all over Northern Germany today. 2014. 1989. Time.... ah. What's time after all? An indefiniteness applied to a code of units and numbers the human mind conjured up in a desperate attempt to gain more of it by giving it a meaning, controlling it. Like it's constituted in our nature to break everything down to the core, regardless of the consequences. Without doubt one of the most fundamental inventions ever made. Whether it's a curse or blessing I dare not say. Constantly ticking, and while typing these words I catch myself thinking that those 25 years gone by since the Wall came down represent by a good chance a third of my lifetime, give or take. Mere seconds in the history of time. And it seemed just like yesterday...

   Taking the exit from the Autobahn you pass by an utopian looking gas station that appears as misplaced there as the wind turbines before entering Marienborn, the former border post that has been a historic pilgrimage center for the last 18 years. A relict of days gone by amidst the so called 'flourishing landscapes' Helmut Kohl promised in 1990. Bullshit. The grass is always, always greener on the other side. It was for at least ten more years, probably more. It still is in people's heads.

  I never visited the site, never stopped, got out of the car and walked around the abandoned buildings. I drive by on a regular basis, four, five times a year, but whenever I set my mind to get off that exit something inside takes a hold of me, frightened, scared, begging me to keep on driving – and I do. We know each other. Got a history.

   According to my Dad it was in the early days of November '87, nearly two years from the day before the Wall came down. I was 4½, not knowing this would be my last trip to the GDR, but who could have foreseen the extreme turns history would take? In my memory the East, as I used to call it with childlike innocence, consisted of nothing but a kaleidoscope of shades of grey, ranging from the light grey of the street lamp posts to the dark grey concrete every building and street seemed to be made of. Picture the Men in Grey from Michael Ende's Momo, soulless, lifeless, blending into one another, only once in a while interrupted by an off-white Trabbi passing by. Like a movie from the early days, everything in it is born between black and white.

  Those early childhood memories are rare, loose fragments you need to piece together to get the whole picture, like polaroid pictures, stills from days gone by, eventually like déjà-vus made up of stories retold by your parents mixed with your own impressions and those from the media. This one, I do remember too well.

  The sun had long been set when we finally pulled up to the checkpoint. It was a dark night, the moonlight being blocked by a thick cloud cover so typical for the dreary month of November. It fit the atmosphere at the crossing. Countless floodlights casting long shadows added up to the eerie mood, a harsh contrast between the utter dark Autobahn we just left and the blazing bright border post we now entered. There was hardly any other car there, so Dad drove straight up to the guardhouse to show our passports, exchange some money, and be gone. The border officials must have been bored that night. Or in dire need of some self-affirmation. I couldn't tell. Wouldn't judge. I didn't walk in their shoes. But the next hour turned out to be an unnecessary harassment you find too often in societies ruled by fear and force. With great power comes great responsibility...

  Three grey uniformed men lead my father into an adjacent office we couldn't get a glimpse into before the door fell shut and stayed shut for another 30 minutes. While so far the procedure didn't catch my attention, after all I was used to it, I finally put down my comic book, climbed between the front seats and looked intensely at my Mom, who tried to act like her calm self for my and her own sake, but I could sense her nervousness and anxiety. Her eyes revealed it. Minutes went by, minutes that seemed like hours. We didn't know about the inquiry Dad had to endure inside, about the extensive search of our luggage for illegal goods we might try to smuggle.

  When they finally left the office after more than half an hour the worst was yet to come. The raid of the entire car. I silently started crying when they took away my Donald Duck comic. 'You mustn't bring capitalistic propaganda literature to our country.' I didn't dare screaming. Tears welled in my eyes, blurring the bright floodlights to a dazzling white mass. The powerlessness of childhood was devastating. The powerlessness my parents must have felt I cannot imagine.

  Finally they let us go. The dark of the night welcomed us, wrapping itself around our car, soothing the fears and pains we just experienced until we finally reached our destination. I remember how that night Dad swore to himself to never set foot to the GDR again. We never would. Then 11/9/89 came around. And with it ecstatic telephone calls. Tears. Laughter. Plans to meet up with our friends after two long years of absence. I wasn't sent to bed that night, I fell asleep by myself on the couch, confused but realizing that I, as much as you can at that age, just witnessed something important, something truly meaningful. But while the actual wall is gone, existing only in our heads, its aftereffects never ceased to exist. 

  For me, it's that night in '87. The fear I felt back then is still inside me. Still haunts me, 27 years later.

  Every time I pass Marienborn.

  Taking down that Wall didn't erase our spatial separation immediately. Neither the varying inner attitudes between East and West. It does take time. To heal up as one nation. What else could you be longing for while roaming the streets of Berlin, where no one had the intention to build a wall 53 years ago...

Heaven knows I'm miserable now

I wrote for six hours straight, a perfect flow, according to Csikszentmihalyi (who's pronounced Tschik-cent-me-hai btw – happy to be at your service), distracted only by adding footnotes, inserting quotes and another desperate attempt to find more than one sophisticated synonym for 'ambivalent', which has been garbaging the pages of my thesis like pigeons shit the streets.

Exhausting myself to the point I couldn't go on for one more minute. Drained of words, thoughts, energy.

But then, suddenly, out of thin air, Oscar Wao came along, took me by the hand, begged me on his chubby knees to follow him...

... and I caved in.

An hour went by, and another, and when I turned that last page, read the last paragraph, spoke the final written words in my head, one of the last golden rays of the late evening sun shone on that half empty page, lighting it up, greeting me with a sudden warmth, a welcoming enlightenment, and it was then that I tasted the salt on my lips for the first time, consciously felt my wet cheeks, my clouded eyes full of teardrops welling up in it, mourning the end of a book, the fate of a character I learned to love, to root for, and there it was. And the truth in it hit me like a sledgehammer.

“In the end? Nothing ends. Nothing ever ends.”

And though I had read these exact words before, written by a different author in a different place and time, they came crushing down on me again with an impact I didn't expect I could withstand, and I felt baffled and helpless and blessed at once, and for a while the book remained in my hands, a finger in between those last pages, for putting it down meant letting it go, along with every thought and feeling I embraced while indulging in this journey of the soul that shook me wide awake right then when I least expected it to. When I needed it the most. Stirring me up like an abandoned Sleeping Beauty, confused, irritated, scared. Did I consciously chose this one, being only one among so many that have been forever in that pile-of-shame of unread books, for some uncanny voice even I couldn't hear must have whispered in my ear to settle on this specific one right now? Do I believe in the divine? Fate?

Fact is, though my life's not at all like Oscar's...

… it's exactly like it.

We're all Oscar Wao.

Driven by our hopes and ambitions to lead the life we hope for, to be truly happy, whatever that means to you, to me - to love ...to be loved back. Yearning for intimacy, crushed if we're rejected, heartbroken, miserable, hitting rock bottom, to the point we get our shit together and keep on going. Stoic at first, baby steps, but after a while anger and despair turn into numbness, into acceptance, into calmness, contentment. The five stages of grief. And if there can possibly be anything ironic about them at all, it may be the fact that the same process that helps you accept death, the possible end of everything, equally guides you back to life.

Nothing ever ends.

So, my life is at a turning point, though by far not as dramatic as the last sentences may have suggested, but just like Oscar, I feel lost. Torn. True pisces fashion.

And yet here I am, with more possibilities than I could have ever hoped for, free to do whatever I want, to start it all new, and like it always is, when there are more flavors of ice-cream than you could possibly eat in your entire lifetime (or not - damn you, lactose intolerance), when one choice, one option looks or sounds better or more promising than the other, when the variety of possible futures clouds your mind, you can't focus on what you need or want the most, as choosing one would mean abandoning all the others, and in the end you're lost in yourself, lost in your hopes and dreams and unless there's someone around to give you that well deserved kick in the butt, to live life at its fullest by feeling the joy of succeeding and the pain of failing on everything you do - unless that happens you'll just stay in your well-established comfort zone, too distracted, too lazy, too comfortable to tear it all down, start again from scratch, build it all up before eventually trashing it down again.
'But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.'

Since fate (and by writing this it seems I may consider acknowledging its existence) has decided to give a nod, the slightest, but nonetheless, it's about time to decide, to push away the fear of eventually losing what you got by aiming for what you hope for.
To give a flying fuck about reason for a change.
No one gets remembered for the things they didn't do.

And in the end, Oscar did, too.

This isn't Kansas anymore!

Heimat.

There is no English equivalent for it. I didn't know that, tried to look it up and as expected ended up with 'home', which doesn't do it justice. Home is... true, where your heart is - and this is as much of a platitude as I can come up with - a place to come back to, a place to feel safe at, to belong to... but still. Heimat is more.

Looking up one word or another while typing these entries I stumbled upon quite a number of words I couldn't find a decent or fitting equivalent for. 'Das Land der Dichter und Denker'... maybe it is. Probably not. Goethe. Schiller. Büchner. Masterminds of the written word, linguistic poets whose works are for most of my generation a merely tolerable pain during highschool, telling stories that, in their blinded minds, can't compete with the lustrous bestselling yet pointless adventures of Ana Steel or Bella Swan – pieces I wouldn't consider touching unless hell freezes over. Go and read Woyzeck, for God's sake.

Anyway. Equivalents... or rather not. But then the Inuit have about forty different words for snow; call it even.

As I said, home doesn't do it justice. Home, a home, your home, a place that felt like home, it can all be abandoned. Replaced. Not forgotten, but closed up.

A lifeless replica of the brimming spaces that meant the world, preserved in formaldehyde, like most memories revisited only once you get the blues, or pleasantly drunk for that matter, simply another item among those already stored on the countless shelves neatly arranged inside your mind.

LA used to be my home away from home, some sort of second home to come back to a couple of times a year.

To keep a long story short, it isn't anymore.

At all.

Getting back didn't feel right. Or satisfying. In the end it's hard to actually admit it to myself, to speak it out loud, type it down, believe it - but I felt empty walking the streets I used to roam too often. An empty shell, an imprint of what used to be, faded, worn out. Crumbling into dust at touch. Santa Monica. Venice Beach. Beautiful, yet drained of all the colors, a black and white reminder that the world keeps turning, come what may.

It was never about LA, although the steady sunshine had always been a welcome relief from the seemingly neverending rain over here. Home being rather about the people you love, yearn to see, speak to, laugh with, while being 5689 miles away on this side of the pond, which once felt like an insurmountable obstacle but in the end turned out to be nothing more than a mere twelve-hour journey trapped in-between poor in-flight entertainment, snoring neighbors, and 12,000m of thin air below your feet.

Without them, well, what's left is a city that to me seems to unceasingly thrive on the energy of the young and restless chasing their dreams. Tinseltown. Loriot, probably the last honest, witty, great thinker we had, was right: 'Früher war mehr Lametta'.

With Steve being dead, C. and A. up in Sacramento and everyone else scattered all over the States there isn't much there to generate the feeling of home I once felt and longed for. It seems right to let it go, to board it up.

But in the end it was the only home I ever had away from home.

Home, the one place that is so much more than just home: Heimat.

Nothing screams Heimat as much as driving down the freeway at night, being greeted by 'Die Drei warmen Brüder', colorfully illuminated, a red and purple light house in the dark ocean of rooftops that sweeps over the city, making one of its ugliest icons the most beautiful one, at least for those who understand that real beauty can only be found in the most trivial things. It's always about the small things; they ground you, remind you where you come from - your roots. Awe.

It's different. It could never be boarded up, forgotten, abandoned. Impossible, it's who I am. The only place to truly and fully feel perfectly comfortable at, welcomed, accepted, being aware of every house, every street in your hood, every damn graffiti. Knowing your way around, down to the smallest aspect of what life means in this specific part of the country. Cherishing the House of Welf's / Guelph's incredible influence on this city, the fact that they provided three kings to the English throne, a personal union that started in 1714 and ended with Queen Victoria in 1837. A city rebuild after the disastrous demolition it experienced during WWII, my grandmother among the countless Trümmerfrauen that helped rebuild what was left. The dialect, the traditions – Pindopp, Krökeln, Lüttje Lage, to name a few. The people, after all.

'We are blood cells alive in the bloodstream of the beating heart of the country' – I couldn't describe it more accurately. It's hard enough to express these abstract thoughts and feelings with words anyway, to bundle them up and give them a meaning that goes beyond sounding like a love drunken fool wearing rose-colored glasses – and it gets worse if you try it in a language that's not your native one. This is my feeble attempt.

But then, Heimat is ambivalent, like an old couple. To some extent you can't stand being around each other on a daily basis, the routine dragging you down, making you wish for something new and exciting to see, experience, feel, but in the end you can't live without one another either. The perfect irony, making sense in a way hardly anything does. Except for Heimat.

ps. aka Author's note: writing about the unique relationships of long married couples brings me back to Loriot and his superb observation skills of human interaction he showed in each of his sketches, animated or not. If you don't know about his work, make sure to check it out.

He is greatly missed.

Fault line

I was raised on the whole 'If you got nothing nice to say, then better say nothing at all' concept, and I am grateful for that. But as much as I try to live by it on a daily basis, sometimes there's simply too much annoyance going on to actually stick to it.

My fault, I know.

And what really works me up are dumb people. Dumb as in acting ignorant, insensitive, rude.

See, my mom has Parkinsons disease. She's been sick for more than 10 years, so this is not new to me, but as it is a progressive disease things naturally don't get better, but only worse.

So yeah, big news, Parkinsons may not be deadly but it's not a walk in the park either. For none of us. She's slow and fragile, has developed a hunch and her sense of balance is majorly screwed up once the meds are wearing off before the next dose is due. Logically, her self-confidence is not the best.

It therefore hurts twice as much if people keep staring at her like she's some kind of freak.

If they keep pushing her away when she can't get out of their way fast enough. Because apparently it doesn't matter if you bump into an old lady who's simply happy to be exceptionally feeling well enough to enjoy a rare trip downtown with her only daughter.

If they make dumb comments once she loses balance again and nearly trips in the middle of a packed department store. No, she's also not drunk or in withdrawal, thanks for considering that. And yes, poor me is her daughter who actually cares and gives a damn whether you treat her nicely or not. Too many don't.

I keep telling her to directly ask people on the bus to offer her a seat, as most simply don't. And I'm not talking about young folks exclusively, but about grown men, suit and tie, too, who should know better. 

Didn't their parents teach them manners? 

Were they raised by a pack of wolves? 

When did being polite became so out of fashion? 

Being ignorant the new mantra to aim for?

Another example?

One of my best friends is diabetic. Type I. Got it when he was 12. Probably genetically inherited, it runs in the family. Which means that all the insulin producing beta cells in his pancreas are literally dead. Not producing any insulin at all. It's different from Type II diabetes and there's no way you can compensate your carbohydrate exchange (or bread units, or sugar input, whatever you prefer) without insulin injections at all.

In case you didn't know.

Which literally boils down to the fact that he has to get his injections a couple of times a day. No matter where we are. One afternoon we were standing right in front of a clothing store downtown when my friend realized his blood sugar was way too high to not do something about it. So he got out a syringe, drew up the insulin and started injecting himself. No biggie. Until the security guy in front of the store suddenly started shouting at us. I won't go into detail but his tirade contained a lot of beep-worthy words as well as fragments like 'junkie', 'police' and 'restraining order'. My friend calmly finished his shot, put away the syringe and all he said was 'Well, I'm diabetic, would you mind giving your general manager a call? I'd like to have a word with him.' Silence. …. Apologies.

Didn't we all watch Trainspotting at some point in our lives? Or any other movie that explicitly depicted someone shooting up heroin? Drugs are injected into veins, insulin is injected into intramuscular fat aka the belly and likewise.

It's not exactly rocket science.

I don't blame those who don't know. I didn't wish to become an expert on Parkinsons or diabetes in the first place. But instead of simply staring or making stupid comments or being rude with no obvious reason while assuming things one shouldn't, people could simply talk to those affected and ask what's going on. Doesn't hurt.

Thing is, they don't. Nobody ever does.

And while biting my tongue nine out of ten times to swallow down that snarky comment, I can't hold it back all the time and in the end it's me who feels bad for saying things to others I probably shouldn't. Even if I got every right to do so. Cause that's the way I was raised and taught to treat others. With respect

I wish there would be some kind of moral lesson to this, but to be honest, I fear there isn't. It's just me getting it all off my chest. Good days, bad days. And a good rant is just what I needed.

Nocturnal Dreams

I shouldn't be writing.

No. I should be writing. Just not in here.

I should be writing my thesis instead of blogging. My thesis that is due in... let's say too soon.

But insomnia took hold of me last night, keeping me awake until the birds started chirping again, which is, for the love of God, way too early these days.
04.13 in the morning to be precise.

A thousand thoughts crossed my mind, one synapse firing off after the other, giving me a hard time to focus on anything besides desperately trying to fall asleep. To no avail.

1am.
Reading seems like a great idea. I recently decided to finally reread Faust Part I, my favourite play throughout highschool, but even Goethe's 200 year old verses didn't work wonders tonight. Neither did the dates and statistical numbers about Alexander the Great I absorbed for a good 30 minutes from the history mag lying next to my bed. Bummer.

2am.
The thunderstorm outside has decided to go full throttle, lightning lighting up my bedroom every other second, making me feel like being trapped in the beam of a strobe light in a dingy 90s teckkno/house club. Luckily without the matching soundtrack. Goethe's last words are said to have been 'More light'. 'Less light' should have been my last words or thoughts for tonight before falling asleep. Well, didn't happen.

3am.
It's about 27° C in here and I can't open the window to let in the fresh breeze the thunderstorm brought along. Can't because of the big fat black spider that besieges my window frame the second the sun sets. My love for animals stops at the point spiders decide it's gonna be a great idea to be my new roommates. And tonight's not the time to chase them with the handy glass-and-postcard-spider-trap just to get them out of my bedroom again, so the window stays closed.

Music then. Food for the soul. Substitute for love.

It's been a Thees Uhlmann kind of day, so I put 'Römer am Ende Roms' on. Turns out listening to songs you can actually sing along to doesn't help falling asleep either.
I should have known. 

Suddenly 'One night in Bangkok' pops up. In my case it was ten nights in Bangkok. The recent events in Thailand bring back memories from 2010 when I unexpectedly ended up in the middle of a Redshirt demonstration next to Chatuchak weekend market. Banners with characters you can't decipher surrounding you, demanding political changes you only barely have an idea about. The general culture shock, although I don't like calling it a shock, it's rather a different, new and refreshing change of perspectives, too overwhelming to deal with such delicate political issues in detail while being on vacation, even if you could somehow feel that something significant was going to happen soon. I got out just in time. Subvarnabhumi Airport was being partially occupied by Redshirts a few days after I got back home. There are pictures of me at the plaza in front of Central World, which burned down only a few weeks later as a result of the uprising protests. Moments in time.

Wanderlust strikes again. Once this dreadful thesis is handed in, all I wanna do is hop on a plane and get out of here. Free my mind. Mid-August maybe, only a week or two, just inbetween all those wedding ceremonies.
Yeah, wishful thinking.
I need to get my mind off of traveling, desired destinations, airfares, and finally find some sleep.

4am.
Birds.

I must have fallen asleep at some point.

7am.
The alarm goes off and for some weird reason I feel wide awake, resfreshed. Still being driven by too many things to ponder about, but at least I can somehow phrase them now. Put words into action, or something like that. Whatever.
About time to get some work done.
50 something pages to go.
I really gotta stop writing now.

To keep on writing.