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.