freiflug

these days when she feels like a bird trapped inside the flock. individuality is lost. everyone looks the same. thinks the same. does the same. these days when she starts walking. leaves the noisy traffic aside. crosses the loud crowds. comes by the groups of students. lifts the head, sees an unknown known face. someone who doesn’t want to fit in as well. someone with a greenish scarf among all the black scarfs. drinking tea insted of wine. walks through the narrow streets of groningen. walks on. breathes. lives.

***
i feel a bit that coincidences cross my life lately. or maybe i’m a bit more mindful these days to notice them? on friday, at work, i was asked what i would do after such a stressful week. maybe drinking a big glass of wine? i said “no, just having a calmful cup of tea.” i was looked at strangely. even more when i said that i rarely drink alcohol.

later that day i was online and i came across these lines by john siddique (from ‘keeping on’):

… i’m going to ask
a cup of tea when all my mates
say let’s get lashed. …

then yesterday, on saturday, i get this great postcrossing-card from the netherlands with the following words for inspiration: birds, fly, fish, sky, float, crowds, Groningen, cozy, students, traffc, travel.

all makes sense in the end.

p.s. on friday night, i didn’t only had a cup of tea. i bought flowers to cheer me up. not very greenish this time of the year but sometimes you just need to leave the streets everyone walks on. and of course, coincidence coincidence, it were tulips from the netherlands.

get inspired

On my way to work I see a house which has the sign ‘Columbushaus’ on top. It makes me smile, thinking of undiscovered places nearby and in far distance waiting to be discovered, it makes me thinking of stories in the far distances, it makes me dream. It inspires me. Just as when I see the sign ‘Café to go’ on a smaller ‘restaurant’ near Mannheim maun station. It always makes me see a tiny, cosy café on its way, making people smile. Where? Of course somewhere on the English coast, wind and sun making the café looking even more lovely.

As a person, as a writer, you’ll find inspiration everywhere. My current examples – sitting in the tram and overhearing the following:

– a guy on the phone, complaing to Hussein that Esra is turning mad and starts to call everyone Arabic names. then the guy asks of Hussein is at home, he would just drop by and give him Esra’s jewellry: who is Esra? why does she turn mad? (or is Esra even real and I overheard the transaction of money, drugs, whatever?!)

– heartbreaking story on the phone: “why did I even bring Charlie along in the group? why haven’t I been smarter?” In this case, Charlie must be a teenager having something on with Max (the best buddy of the young man on the phone) – who is deeply in love with Charlie and even cried about her (don’t ask how much I got to know in 15 minutes on the tram): what if Charlie was not a teenager but in her mid-30ies? and Max already married and father? how would the story then turn?

– current favourite (not discovered on the tram though but on a paper found on a book from the library): ‘planing Cleopatra’s vacation’. For 100 percenr, Cleopatra is a cat but why not imagine you are in ancient Egypt and it’s your task to organise Cleopatra’s ‘vacation’ to Rome?!

There’s so much inspiration for your inner little curious pinguin (maybe -writer) :-)

Dear Alice

Alice finds the small postcard when she comes home from the factory, tired, so dirty that she even doesn’t want to to hold this precious gift in her hands. Normally she would now wash herself, put the blackest of all her dresses on and walk to the church nearby, to convince herself and all the others that she makes everything all right, as a widow of 22 years. But this day she only washes her hands, tries to make her hair, her face bloom againm puts the summer dress on that her lost lover loved so much and walks off. Ignores the gazes, the words “Mrs. Robinson, will you attend mess later?” and gets off to Daisy Hill. When they still lived together in Bradford, she and Polly, and when sadness was long away, the two got there all day, until one of their brothers was sent to bring them home, laughed so much, dreamt of the men they would kiss one day … Alice wants to be Miss Alice Smith again, not Mrs. Alice Robinson, and she’s 17 again when she reads that Polly may come one day this week, when she sees Walter’s name … Alice blossoms out when she sits on Daisy Hill. Let hunger and death be gone for a least that small, sunny moment on a normal day in May 1919.

crepuscular

The Night’s setting in while she makes her way from the French Pub through the streets of London. A greyish mode draws in the faces of the people passing by, the lights get less and less, only the news headlines, displaced in the windows in strong letters, still guide her way. Meghan and Harry are all on the top, their story of choosing a home from another. And she herself has not any home left. Turing the corner, she arrives in Oxford Street. Where are all the people who normally rush by, making the last shopping before home calls them? An old bus, lighting up the early night, gets visible in the distance. When it comes close, she sees that it’s a no. 12. It would be so easy – jumping on and driving home – to Chris, whose smile would beat her away the moment he would open the door – only waiting for her to come home.

dancing forest

it makes me wonder – why to sell postcards from the apostles peter and paul in such a place?

did they ever get drunk
got they ever invited to a dance with a beautiful girl
they did ever smiled about nature’s beauty

?

small ideas while visiting the dancing forest
in kaliningrad oblast

returning home

Isn’t it crazy, he thinks, that the guy who offers him a new future has the same name like he and lives in a city where a famous person was killed? Jeff knows that he isn’t famous, and he doubts that he will ever as famous as John F. Kennedy but he sees as this as a bad omen somehow and black thoughts are with him as the plane makes its way from Recife up to the North. Jeff looks out of the plane, there’s only the greyish fog of this late December-sky. Then the sun breaks through and Jeff sees the rain forest, remembers the tours together with his family, to beautiful places, with cold water, with hot weather, when sometimes they hadn’t so much, except for themselves and the cildren’s smiles.

In the end, it’s only the airport of Dallas that Jeff sees from the US.

When he flies back, the sky is so blue, so colourful blue.

see you again

i see him. i see him again. in the sun’s reflection in the tram. in little istanbul’s chaos. in the shops’ windows when i see my wedding dress that he will touch with his soft hands, that he will undress slowly. in any man’s gesture, words, lips. i see him. i see him again. i don’t see him. i don’t see him again.

the coliseum of our dreams

They asked themselves why she started crying. Who would cry when you get a bunch of lovely flowers and a beautiful birthday card – on your birthday? They shook their head in disbelief and, not knowing what to do, they finally left her alone. When returning to their office rooms, some of them whispered “Marie is so strange. No wonder she doesn’t find a boyfriend.”

In her office, Marie had stopped crying but the reason why she had started to feel sad was still there. It had been the card that had made her cry. Why on Earth an old retro card, showing an advertisement of Robert Scott & Son from Philadelphia from the 1920ies, had started all this drama? Sometimes everything comes together – Marie had known a Robert from Philadelphia who always bought her lovely pink roses and who now was gone because she couldn’t stand his dog Scott. Who Marie now missed so strong. Both of them.

In the radio, Russian rapper Oxxymiron started his story of the coliseum of unfulfilled dreams.

And Marie started to cry again.

a story

When the American soldiers left, Ahmed came. He looked around, his eyes wandering on the yellow, dry ground, searching for something to pick up and hold in his hands, as a trophy maybe, to remember what had happened or simply to sell it afterwards. He made his way through the camp that had been full of life only some hours ago, only to find some coca-cola-cans and some empty medicine packs. Ahmed went in some of the smaller tents which, now the air-conditing was gone, had heavily heated up. There was no light, he didn’t know why he stayed as the tent was empty. But he couldn’t leave, didn’t want to. Ahmed closed his eyes, enjoyed the peace of the silence. When he finally made his way back into the sun, Ahmed’s gaze fell on the ground. Something was reflected in the light. Ahmed bend down, his old hands grabbed a piece of paper. At first he didn’t know what it was until he realized he had a postcard in his hands. It showed a mountain with snow that reminded Ahmed of the hills of his childhood. Ahmed knew English, through he hadn’t spoken the language in a long time. Packwood, Washington it said on the front. Ahmed turned the card around, his tired eyes reading the small words. He learned that Packwood had first been named Sulphur Springs, then was called Lewis until it was changed to Packwood in the 1930’s to prevent mail for Fort Lewis from being mistaken sent to the town of Lewis. Ahmed was so fascinated by the story of the city that he didn’t pay attention what else was written on the card. 4 words. awe inspiring. indubitably. and, written in an elegant way, the name Maria. Maybe that was the more capturing story than of a city changing its name so many times? Ahmed would never know. In his mind he was somewhere else, in a time long gone.

we

we scream

we run
we fight

we take stones/in our hands/to throw
we hold up/words/against
we stand/together

we shout

we cry

we fight

to
be
free

***
When I hold this card from Hungary (showing the Liberty Statur in Budapest, built “in rememmbrance of those who sacrified their lives for the independance of Hungary in WWII) in my hands, I had came back from a long working day in the area of Neckar-Odenwald-Kreis. I grew up near by and when we made our way from and back to Mannheim, I felt at home. I saw villages similar to those from my childhood, always appearing to be from a lost time, enjoyed the peaceful nature in lovely Autumn light. It was early evening, the sun had gone down, when we came back to Mannheim. We got struck in traffic jam near the main station, everything was blocked. Later when I made my way home from my working station, I saw why. There had be a demonstration of Kurds against the Turkish politics in Syria which ended in some smaller clashes between Kurds and Turks. I saw police men, all armed up, standing in formation, like in a war to protect themselves from the world around them.

When the tram stopped at the main station, three kids entered and a woman holding a younger child in her arms. They sat down next to me and I thought they formed a group until one of the child asked the woman if she was Turkish. She laughed, paused a bit, and then said “No, I’m Kurdish.” I couldn’t understand what the girl said, only the woman’s reply – “that’s not nice to say.” Still, the woman laughed and said goodbye when she left the tram one station later.

Mannheim, October 2019