I belong to a rare subset of people who are at once young and prone to a collection of metaphysical contemplations that befit more affably people of older ages. Since when people are older, as they invariably are, they would have suffered more, and thus become more lucid of the various absurdities that humans naturally harbor. But I am also one of those who, when considered broadly as a whole, isn't special at all, but rather is only aloof. My capacity seldom extends beyond what I write, and even what I write offers no value in a material sense. The act of writing to me, is merely a pastime I savor for the feeling of having written something. Whether I'm well-read or well-versed is of no concern to me. Like the decidedly sub-par teddy bear at the machine, I write not for the aesthetic pleasure of my prose, nor for the philosophical poignancy of my words, but for a simple, transient hedonistic sensuality that would drive others to post pictures on Instagram or to write Facebook posts for the likes of strangers. I am no different from other people in all aspects however difficult it is for me to perceive it that way, shallow and thoughtless, ignorant and sad, like the old poet in bed, patting himself to sleep not with mellow lyrics but with a soft voice.
Many things I have heartily championed have turned out to be futile and useless. And other things, while corporeal and commonplace, have taken up a central role in my life. The bard at Alexanderplatz sang yesterday "pitiful are those who sleep in suit". And I just so happened to walk past him in suit, letting out only an inner burst of awkward laugh and a half-joking admission of truth. However, even truer is the fact that the bard was wearing his non-suit, broadcasting the twaddle of his guitar to a non-audience, only to return later to his earthy abode for the mere continuity of life. Till this day, I have not yet met with another person who at least, is not only alive at the moment, but is also partially alive in all moments, keeping a conscious note of the innocence of youth, the banality of adulthood, the oblivion of elderliness, and the dark nothingness of an ultimate decease. Perhaps I have met them indeed, but perhaps their experiences and upbringings accustomed them to seeing things more positively, and thus differently from how I would see them.
The warm quietude of a Berlin afternoon acquaints me well. The ravens are crowing down the street, around a small patch of food beside a small patch of bush I would never be able to see. Their sounds confer what the yellow sun, green field, and blue ocean have been conferring for millenniums ever since the planet became what it is. And here we humans intoxicate ourselves with wines and breakfast and laptop and a beautiful song. The kid who asked me astrophysical questions is there; the cashier who laughed with me at the Chinese cabbage and kohlrabi is there; even the chatter of bartenders and patrons at the anonymous club is clearer when seen nostalgically; while I sit where I've always sat, forever listening to their buzz.
A distant siren roams by, and breaks off the silent monotony of my observation. And I realize, on this dirty office chair with the usual vividness of my indifference, that the walls surrounding me right now, the windows through which I sometimes see and hear, and this apartment in Christinenstrasse, are my exile. I clasp behind the windowsill like a prisoner behind bars, a widow inside the carriage, and an orphan behind the doors, only farther from their freedom, their husband, and their mom.
And such and such, I capitulate to reality with a false feverishness echoed by the room.
Sunday, September 11
Monday, September 5
9/5
The chilling breeze of an autumn night began to blow. Drizzles poured mildly over the eaves of the apartment building. I was close enough to still hear the wild and sporadic laughters of the kids from the playground. Yet after the distinct sound of the tires brushing against the newly wet ground, the laughters disappeared, as well as many other sounds that usually lingered amongst the air at this time of the day. I was sitting in the vacated room opposite to where I used to sleep, accompanied by no more than the black cat on the head of whom I liked to pet. It was quite cathartic, to briefly stay away from the computer, and just listen to what the world had to offer when it was unhindered by the electric swarms of noises and colors.
Three large cranes, all erected when my freshness of starting a new job was still alive, were towering against the faint orange grey of a distant dusk. Every morning I saw them; yet every morning I passed before them like the motorcade of an unknown official, condescending and slight. But I watched them more closely this evening. It was not that my eyes could tell their shapes with better integrity, nor that my understanding of the functionality of the cranes would improve, just that, I became, albeit very briefly, devout to the cranes that had been so marginal yet so integral to my identity. The basketball court where, for a not-so-short period of time, I played basketball daily, and the Momos dumpling restaurant, where I had wanted to visit and decided not to, and the Rewe supermarket, with its friendly hopeful homeless guy sitting at the front door, all lay metaphysically dormant, shrouded by the torpor and dread of the weather turning cold. Strangely I had been more careless and glad last winter. Perhaps, back then everything was more withdrawn and decided, and I more churlish and forgiving.
The crescendo of the blue sky began to command a blacker hue. Throughout this day, Berlin was utterly cloudy. During the night, the clouds would be less discernible, and so would the stars. I looked outwards without nostalgia nor hope. It was one of the looks I routinely posed when something had puzzled me, with my mouth half-open, as if whispering the silenced words. Indeed, it was puzzling, the monochromatic purity of the night, almost like a brutalist building without its eager edges and looming contours, only more simplistic, and more straightforward. I felt more puzzled as I looked up in the sky, the all-encompassing dome under which all but a few of my race had dwelled. Wars were ravaged, wonderful stories told, wine drunk from the glass, the songs sung at the fire, the distant pleasures I described lyrically, and the nearer ones I remembered but neglected. Yet the darkness of every night had eaten them all, leaving behind only the skeletons, bare and confined to the weariness of their afterlife.
Suddenly a small gust of wind nudged against my upper arm. I closed the window, severing the flimsy tie I had with the already invisible sky. Indoors, surrounded by the slow buzz of the heater, and the dizzying snide of the television one room and a corridor away, I wallowed in my bed with a smartphone to a gradual halt.
-
I woke up gracelessly, with a deep longing of going back to sleep. After three snoozes, I sluggishly braced my body upwards. Today could be my final trip to Bremen before spring next year, and I foresaw it as being rather placid and repetitive.
Another day started without my conscious knowing of it. Only in my weakened memory of what was yesterday and the day before did I infer that indeed I had slept, and that the planet had already completed yet another cycle of rotation. I was riding on the InterCity train from Hamburg to Bremen. The trees and bushes flew by the windows on both sides, and were pigeonholed into fleeting shades of green and gray. The wagon ran on a constant speed that was already beyond the comprehension of the human brain. And I was like a willingly startled cat, boxed up in the cabin to be sent to a familiar strange vet.
Bremen, an objectively neutral place, when coupled with the various things I had learned to associate with it for the past two years, turned decidedly dolorous. It was earthly and real, and therefore more relatable to the emotions felt during a true heartbreak, rather than those invented when reading a romance novel. I hadn't got a useful word to say about it. In Bremen I was more speechless than I was anywhere else.
I began to miss Berlin almost instantaneously. Like a lost child yearning for the fragrance of the homemade bread, which for him didn't exist, I yearned for the serenity of a salaried life, which for me, likewise didn't exist.
I was still quite familiar with Bremen's public transportation system, as well as different Starbucks locations without the aid of Google Maps, so I was able to order Caramel Macchiato this time. In the taste of it, there was simultaneously a sweetness reminiscent of the local cuisines of where I came from, and a loosely bitter touch of coffee that for me, pertained firmly to a western ideal that wasn't included in my original upbringing. On the chair with steel framework and a black woven cushion made from bamboo, I mentally curled up into a ball, protected from the incessant rumble that was Bremen.
I envisaged, with a level of earnestness likened to that of a man's tears, how marvelous, how staggering, how vastly cherishable must it be, if in the future I finally freed myself of the fears and uncertainties that were marauding me now. But I could never be too sure of it - my life was a book that had been merely initiated, but remained unplanned, and unplannable.
And thus, without gaining any new perspective into my existing pool of knowledge, I took a ceremonial sip from the empty coffee cup, rose up, and left.
-
The sky cleared as I left Bremen. I became calm and joyful.
Three large cranes, all erected when my freshness of starting a new job was still alive, were towering against the faint orange grey of a distant dusk. Every morning I saw them; yet every morning I passed before them like the motorcade of an unknown official, condescending and slight. But I watched them more closely this evening. It was not that my eyes could tell their shapes with better integrity, nor that my understanding of the functionality of the cranes would improve, just that, I became, albeit very briefly, devout to the cranes that had been so marginal yet so integral to my identity. The basketball court where, for a not-so-short period of time, I played basketball daily, and the Momos dumpling restaurant, where I had wanted to visit and decided not to, and the Rewe supermarket, with its friendly hopeful homeless guy sitting at the front door, all lay metaphysically dormant, shrouded by the torpor and dread of the weather turning cold. Strangely I had been more careless and glad last winter. Perhaps, back then everything was more withdrawn and decided, and I more churlish and forgiving.
The crescendo of the blue sky began to command a blacker hue. Throughout this day, Berlin was utterly cloudy. During the night, the clouds would be less discernible, and so would the stars. I looked outwards without nostalgia nor hope. It was one of the looks I routinely posed when something had puzzled me, with my mouth half-open, as if whispering the silenced words. Indeed, it was puzzling, the monochromatic purity of the night, almost like a brutalist building without its eager edges and looming contours, only more simplistic, and more straightforward. I felt more puzzled as I looked up in the sky, the all-encompassing dome under which all but a few of my race had dwelled. Wars were ravaged, wonderful stories told, wine drunk from the glass, the songs sung at the fire, the distant pleasures I described lyrically, and the nearer ones I remembered but neglected. Yet the darkness of every night had eaten them all, leaving behind only the skeletons, bare and confined to the weariness of their afterlife.
Suddenly a small gust of wind nudged against my upper arm. I closed the window, severing the flimsy tie I had with the already invisible sky. Indoors, surrounded by the slow buzz of the heater, and the dizzying snide of the television one room and a corridor away, I wallowed in my bed with a smartphone to a gradual halt.
-
I woke up gracelessly, with a deep longing of going back to sleep. After three snoozes, I sluggishly braced my body upwards. Today could be my final trip to Bremen before spring next year, and I foresaw it as being rather placid and repetitive.
Another day started without my conscious knowing of it. Only in my weakened memory of what was yesterday and the day before did I infer that indeed I had slept, and that the planet had already completed yet another cycle of rotation. I was riding on the InterCity train from Hamburg to Bremen. The trees and bushes flew by the windows on both sides, and were pigeonholed into fleeting shades of green and gray. The wagon ran on a constant speed that was already beyond the comprehension of the human brain. And I was like a willingly startled cat, boxed up in the cabin to be sent to a familiar strange vet.
Bremen, an objectively neutral place, when coupled with the various things I had learned to associate with it for the past two years, turned decidedly dolorous. It was earthly and real, and therefore more relatable to the emotions felt during a true heartbreak, rather than those invented when reading a romance novel. I hadn't got a useful word to say about it. In Bremen I was more speechless than I was anywhere else.
I began to miss Berlin almost instantaneously. Like a lost child yearning for the fragrance of the homemade bread, which for him didn't exist, I yearned for the serenity of a salaried life, which for me, likewise didn't exist.
I was still quite familiar with Bremen's public transportation system, as well as different Starbucks locations without the aid of Google Maps, so I was able to order Caramel Macchiato this time. In the taste of it, there was simultaneously a sweetness reminiscent of the local cuisines of where I came from, and a loosely bitter touch of coffee that for me, pertained firmly to a western ideal that wasn't included in my original upbringing. On the chair with steel framework and a black woven cushion made from bamboo, I mentally curled up into a ball, protected from the incessant rumble that was Bremen.
I envisaged, with a level of earnestness likened to that of a man's tears, how marvelous, how staggering, how vastly cherishable must it be, if in the future I finally freed myself of the fears and uncertainties that were marauding me now. But I could never be too sure of it - my life was a book that had been merely initiated, but remained unplanned, and unplannable.
And thus, without gaining any new perspective into my existing pool of knowledge, I took a ceremonial sip from the empty coffee cup, rose up, and left.
-
The sky cleared as I left Bremen. I became calm and joyful.
Sunday, September 4
9/4
What is there to be written about the life of an office clerk? While the receptionist could be a game enthusiast, the cleaning lady a loving mother, the IT specialist a geek, a clerk always seems a clerk, one of those looming yet anonymous figures at the corners of the office, mostly typing on the keyboard of who knows what words, and occasionally staring somewhere with an attentive gaze of empty thoughts. In those moments, it seems almost counterintuitive to envision for the office clerk a congenial group of friends, a colorful arrangement of events, or a distinguished habit of enjoying a series of refined tastes after the daily ritual has finished. The stern, inexorable face of blandness and bore extends beyond the boundary of a firm, leaps past the crowds and restaurants and tram stations, and terminates only in bed where the loose cotton collar of the pajamas replaces the strangle of the tie, bringing in an unfamiliar, even hostile sensation of freedom and aimlessness - only before sleep does the clerk get to undress from his hefty costume and entertain a shiver of animalistic sloth, perhaps just like a woman after her sixties, when the urge to feign a layer of femininity begins to subside, and when scarcely anyone would pay attention.
But according to the more established, and hence more resigned of the clerks, life with all of its moments of hope and ecstasy, is fundamentally unglamorous. The majority of those who take the pleasure of walking under the trees entitle to it by bearing the grind and angst that came as a price for one's subsistence; the couples who buy movie tickets and popcorns could afford them precisely because they have earned their money, paid their rent, and would not mind spending some extra time having fun; the pianist performs flawlessly on-stage for he has played endlessly off of it; even the smile of a clown could not be lastingly maintained without some aching of the muscle. And hence to be a clerk, a hermit, a clown, or a poet is to be no different, all are but gimmicks that they deployed for the comfort and illusion of the sense of belonging with which they gild themselves. These are ways in which most of the people live by; even for the few who are accustomed to life's tedium, they serve as rare solaces, that after all, to have a mode to follow is to have a pat on the back, however wicked and impenetrable things are to become.
Perhaps, the clerk has already known, that if life is the confusion over a long road trip leading nowhere, then it is infinitely easier to be thoughtless and vague than to be pensive and agonized. For after all, with only the intermittent reassurance of voices of the radio and the engine that seems to accompany it forever, the trip will consist mostly of a gradual process of realizing, and reconciling with its inevitable end. And hence if to be thoughtless and vague is to desert from an unwinnable war, those who fought heroically and dramatically face their demise quicker, after which they experience neither joy nor honor; however, for those who have the foresight to plan out the details of the retreat before the battle has even begun, the pleasure lies in the aftermaths, where they gloat at the graves of the heroes, and revel in the unique privilege of being able to do so.
However, having not the courage of entering a battle, nor the ignorance of a useless escape, the clerk chooses to play along with what life has to offer with only half-hearted interest, and half-hearted remorse.
Then, beneath the green of an Excel sheet, he lights up his imaginary cigarette for a subconscious smoke.
But according to the more established, and hence more resigned of the clerks, life with all of its moments of hope and ecstasy, is fundamentally unglamorous. The majority of those who take the pleasure of walking under the trees entitle to it by bearing the grind and angst that came as a price for one's subsistence; the couples who buy movie tickets and popcorns could afford them precisely because they have earned their money, paid their rent, and would not mind spending some extra time having fun; the pianist performs flawlessly on-stage for he has played endlessly off of it; even the smile of a clown could not be lastingly maintained without some aching of the muscle. And hence to be a clerk, a hermit, a clown, or a poet is to be no different, all are but gimmicks that they deployed for the comfort and illusion of the sense of belonging with which they gild themselves. These are ways in which most of the people live by; even for the few who are accustomed to life's tedium, they serve as rare solaces, that after all, to have a mode to follow is to have a pat on the back, however wicked and impenetrable things are to become.
Perhaps, the clerk has already known, that if life is the confusion over a long road trip leading nowhere, then it is infinitely easier to be thoughtless and vague than to be pensive and agonized. For after all, with only the intermittent reassurance of voices of the radio and the engine that seems to accompany it forever, the trip will consist mostly of a gradual process of realizing, and reconciling with its inevitable end. And hence if to be thoughtless and vague is to desert from an unwinnable war, those who fought heroically and dramatically face their demise quicker, after which they experience neither joy nor honor; however, for those who have the foresight to plan out the details of the retreat before the battle has even begun, the pleasure lies in the aftermaths, where they gloat at the graves of the heroes, and revel in the unique privilege of being able to do so.
However, having not the courage of entering a battle, nor the ignorance of a useless escape, the clerk chooses to play along with what life has to offer with only half-hearted interest, and half-hearted remorse.
Then, beneath the green of an Excel sheet, he lights up his imaginary cigarette for a subconscious smoke.
Wednesday, August 17
8/17
"Invalidenpark!" the usual mechanical voice of the BVG tram announced on my way to Berlin Central Station. This was 5 AM in the morning. I had woken up early to embark upon another journey to Bremen. Perhaps because I was half asleep, or perhaps because of the startlingly cold weather, there was an element in the voice that somehow charmed me. My mind seemed to wander back to the winter mere months ago, when I was in every respect clueless about the happenings that I would eventually encounter.
My memory of that time was harshly diluted. But I still remembered when the conditions had been the direst, I would take one of those nightly walks around the small patch of green in front of the building. I framed in my writings of those walks in such a way so that they appear less miserable than they actually were. And when every once in a while, another person showed up and interrupted my monologue (those monologues were often vague and ceaseless thoughts that I verbalized for the reassurance of hearing a man's voice), I would let out a silent gasp of exasperation, yet at the same time walk by, seemingly unaffected. I would prefer that a stranger kept away from the truth of another stranger, and sometimes, away from me.
I was smart enough, or to put it more accurately, conscious enough since the word "smart" has a certain connotation I visibly lack, to understand deeply that I was trekking on a road unknown and unguided, that a certifiable portion of my future was largely dependent on coincidences and luck. But it didn't prevent me from temporarily acknowledging, that I was the freest when I put my feet onto the ground. And my days back then centered around those walks.
Events quickly turned, even disfigured in the coming weeks. Maybe I got lucky, maybe my merit had made the gradual transition between pretense and substance, I got interviews waiting ahead in a consecutive line. And I played as wildly and as exuberantly as I could in these selection processes, priding them as my window into a world that had hitherto been unseen. I disposed of my ragged t-shirts in favor of suit and tie, and washed away my weary smile to put on a professional smirk. The change took place drastically yet unnoticeably. And it appeared, upon retrospect, that whatever tricks I had previously prized to console myself, were no more than the false and futile attempt at resuscitating a man who's already doomed to a swift and imminent death.
I discovered, that philosophy and wit, while quite helpful in alleviating the sufferings when there is too much to endure, and in calming the fidgety spirits when things go well, aren't too conducive to delivering me the truth. They aren't something I could resort to when I found myself lost or mired, or overly jubilated. They are merely an enlargement of my own will, and of my own emotions. This is not a comforting fact for someone who believed firmly the virtue of wisdom and ingenuity. But life after all, has always been a sort of giant pain in the ass that isn't terribly easy to sort out.
This small detour to Bremen, bland and uneventful as it felt, wasn't entirely useless. It afforded me a scant opportunity of sitting down and letting loose, as I spent more than half a day on the train and another half on the bench in the hill by Am Wasser. In Berlin there's also a road called Unter den Linden, which though close to Am Wasser in grammar, is an entirely different place. Unter den Linden with all of its grand shops and theatrical venues, is but a part of my daily commute; yet Am Wasser is my refuge. In this alien place I was once superbly familiar with, I got to look towards the past with more compassion and gratefulness.
The sky with its blue, the tree with its green, and the rustles of the leaves, the combination of them all, added with a tinge of smell that was moist and sweet, struck me as supremely mesmerizing. In it there's a certain sense of destiny that went far beyond what the word beauty could capture; in it there's an outstanding stubbornness, that even when the planet itself has perished, the stubbornness would persist. I used to denounce my group of friends who disliked such stubbornness, or "vasanas" in one of their Buddhist terms. It was only by sitting on the bench did I realize that, indeed, the stubbornness they had despised has also been elusive to me.
Recently I came across a piece in one of the older issues of the LRB. Despite being heavily abridged by its author, there's a clip in it that profoundly moves me:
"At 7 a.m., 'in a square on the outskirts of Padua, New Zealand soldiers are shaving, their mirrors placed on the side of their tanks.' At 7.30 a.m. 'twenty-year-old German Lieutenant Claus Sellier, wearing only his underwear, is looking out of the window of the Hotel Gasthaus zum Brau in Lofer, Austria.' And so on for another 250 pages and forty-odd hours. We even find out what Alistair Cooke had for breakfast in San Francisco (not grilled mutton kidneys but 'two eggs over easy, sausages, pancakes and syrup'), and learn that 'the dour-looking Molotov has a softer side.'"
Even when times are the most wicked, shaving, underwear, breakfast, and a hidden soft chord of the human heart march on.
My memory of that time was harshly diluted. But I still remembered when the conditions had been the direst, I would take one of those nightly walks around the small patch of green in front of the building. I framed in my writings of those walks in such a way so that they appear less miserable than they actually were. And when every once in a while, another person showed up and interrupted my monologue (those monologues were often vague and ceaseless thoughts that I verbalized for the reassurance of hearing a man's voice), I would let out a silent gasp of exasperation, yet at the same time walk by, seemingly unaffected. I would prefer that a stranger kept away from the truth of another stranger, and sometimes, away from me.
I was smart enough, or to put it more accurately, conscious enough since the word "smart" has a certain connotation I visibly lack, to understand deeply that I was trekking on a road unknown and unguided, that a certifiable portion of my future was largely dependent on coincidences and luck. But it didn't prevent me from temporarily acknowledging, that I was the freest when I put my feet onto the ground. And my days back then centered around those walks.
Events quickly turned, even disfigured in the coming weeks. Maybe I got lucky, maybe my merit had made the gradual transition between pretense and substance, I got interviews waiting ahead in a consecutive line. And I played as wildly and as exuberantly as I could in these selection processes, priding them as my window into a world that had hitherto been unseen. I disposed of my ragged t-shirts in favor of suit and tie, and washed away my weary smile to put on a professional smirk. The change took place drastically yet unnoticeably. And it appeared, upon retrospect, that whatever tricks I had previously prized to console myself, were no more than the false and futile attempt at resuscitating a man who's already doomed to a swift and imminent death.
I discovered, that philosophy and wit, while quite helpful in alleviating the sufferings when there is too much to endure, and in calming the fidgety spirits when things go well, aren't too conducive to delivering me the truth. They aren't something I could resort to when I found myself lost or mired, or overly jubilated. They are merely an enlargement of my own will, and of my own emotions. This is not a comforting fact for someone who believed firmly the virtue of wisdom and ingenuity. But life after all, has always been a sort of giant pain in the ass that isn't terribly easy to sort out.
This small detour to Bremen, bland and uneventful as it felt, wasn't entirely useless. It afforded me a scant opportunity of sitting down and letting loose, as I spent more than half a day on the train and another half on the bench in the hill by Am Wasser. In Berlin there's also a road called Unter den Linden, which though close to Am Wasser in grammar, is an entirely different place. Unter den Linden with all of its grand shops and theatrical venues, is but a part of my daily commute; yet Am Wasser is my refuge. In this alien place I was once superbly familiar with, I got to look towards the past with more compassion and gratefulness.
The sky with its blue, the tree with its green, and the rustles of the leaves, the combination of them all, added with a tinge of smell that was moist and sweet, struck me as supremely mesmerizing. In it there's a certain sense of destiny that went far beyond what the word beauty could capture; in it there's an outstanding stubbornness, that even when the planet itself has perished, the stubbornness would persist. I used to denounce my group of friends who disliked such stubbornness, or "vasanas" in one of their Buddhist terms. It was only by sitting on the bench did I realize that, indeed, the stubbornness they had despised has also been elusive to me.
Recently I came across a piece in one of the older issues of the LRB. Despite being heavily abridged by its author, there's a clip in it that profoundly moves me:
"At 7 a.m., 'in a square on the outskirts of Padua, New Zealand soldiers are shaving, their mirrors placed on the side of their tanks.' At 7.30 a.m. 'twenty-year-old German Lieutenant Claus Sellier, wearing only his underwear, is looking out of the window of the Hotel Gasthaus zum Brau in Lofer, Austria.' And so on for another 250 pages and forty-odd hours. We even find out what Alistair Cooke had for breakfast in San Francisco (not grilled mutton kidneys but 'two eggs over easy, sausages, pancakes and syrup'), and learn that 'the dour-looking Molotov has a softer side.'"
Even when times are the most wicked, shaving, underwear, breakfast, and a hidden soft chord of the human heart march on.
Sunday, August 7
8/7
Mine is a process of transforming, slowly, from an enthusiastic young man whose believes are often indefensible but unusually firm, to a slightly older chap who appears often dull with only occasional rejoices to seep through. I make more reasonable decisions, culture an instinct of deliberation, and have become a pupil of trade-off - in all, my lack of vivacity is a conscious decision.
Telltales I once lightly sneered at turned out to be true, and even inevitable, that a young man loses his vibe with age, however he might like to prefer the otherwise. Though my capitulation, so shall I say it, didn't come without a few attempts at resistance. One year ago I was hopelessly in love with a woman whose name I hardly recall, and after that I fell trap into an entrepreneurial venture with an equally laudable amount of zeal. Both of them have now faded into my own versions of the telltale, at which others could continue to sneer.
Since my dusts appear to have settled at the moment, I console myself with the fact that while many things might have changed, I am still here for my own company. Even though the "friends" I play Pokémon Go with are purely fictional, the "family" with whom I always keep in touch are merely a collection of distant figures with but a few loose threads of the filial strings connected to me, and the "cold-pressed juice" I bragged about is what I have only imagined to drink. It suddenly occurs to me that, quite frankly I have taken such a deviating path that I am the only person I know who's really on it. I am all alone here, choosing to neglect this fact not due to an absence of care, but due to an absence of power. I'm like a child at the kindergarten, delaying sleep to construct a blanket fort whose protection dissipates and ugly side revealed with every change in posture.
Sandra Mattke, whimsical as it is to enlist her name here, has also decided to leave. For all the polite exchanges between us, like the girl from Bavaria, she has left unannounced, taking the remnant of her vacation quota with her. I still remember a time when I would joyfully leap forth to her workplace, and ask her about her first aider training, and occasionally, her baby. In her look, there was a certain unwillingness that I caught but paid no attention to. I presume, that unwillingness had already foreboded my surprise. I feel the urge to mention her in this passage, for I'm adamant in the fact that if I don't take the opportunity to mention her now, I might as well never do. (Mysteriously, or rather not so mysteriously, Sandra has returned.)
It's hard to discern the state of the affairs for the adults. Someone once told me that maintaining relationships with other people is never for the folstering of human togetherness, but is rather for having fun, and for being able to continue to have fun even when a portion of the circle have left. There is also a slang from my country that is aptly wise: whoever is the first to take it seriously, would be the first to lose. Yet I have always failed to imagine either a circle incomplete or an attitude towards life giddy and unattending. But, when it comes to relationships, personal willfulness hardly ever matters.
It's… it's just like that, myriads of fragmented moments, of chatting under the linden tree with a gang of friends, of packing up under the yellow light to set off for another city, of an apprehension towards the unknown of the future, of a regret that fails to die with the past, of piano keys, of porns, of the orange juice, of the anonymous tunes sung at the shower head… everything seems sensible in their moments; yet when put together, all the frames, they are just beyond me, leaving me humbled by the grandeur and minusculity of an organism's journey.
Telltales I once lightly sneered at turned out to be true, and even inevitable, that a young man loses his vibe with age, however he might like to prefer the otherwise. Though my capitulation, so shall I say it, didn't come without a few attempts at resistance. One year ago I was hopelessly in love with a woman whose name I hardly recall, and after that I fell trap into an entrepreneurial venture with an equally laudable amount of zeal. Both of them have now faded into my own versions of the telltale, at which others could continue to sneer.
Since my dusts appear to have settled at the moment, I console myself with the fact that while many things might have changed, I am still here for my own company. Even though the "friends" I play Pokémon Go with are purely fictional, the "family" with whom I always keep in touch are merely a collection of distant figures with but a few loose threads of the filial strings connected to me, and the "cold-pressed juice" I bragged about is what I have only imagined to drink. It suddenly occurs to me that, quite frankly I have taken such a deviating path that I am the only person I know who's really on it. I am all alone here, choosing to neglect this fact not due to an absence of care, but due to an absence of power. I'm like a child at the kindergarten, delaying sleep to construct a blanket fort whose protection dissipates and ugly side revealed with every change in posture.
Sandra Mattke, whimsical as it is to enlist her name here, has also decided to leave. For all the polite exchanges between us, like the girl from Bavaria, she has left unannounced, taking the remnant of her vacation quota with her. I still remember a time when I would joyfully leap forth to her workplace, and ask her about her first aider training, and occasionally, her baby. In her look, there was a certain unwillingness that I caught but paid no attention to. I presume, that unwillingness had already foreboded my surprise. I feel the urge to mention her in this passage, for I'm adamant in the fact that if I don't take the opportunity to mention her now, I might as well never do. (Mysteriously, or rather not so mysteriously, Sandra has returned.)
It's hard to discern the state of the affairs for the adults. Someone once told me that maintaining relationships with other people is never for the folstering of human togetherness, but is rather for having fun, and for being able to continue to have fun even when a portion of the circle have left. There is also a slang from my country that is aptly wise: whoever is the first to take it seriously, would be the first to lose. Yet I have always failed to imagine either a circle incomplete or an attitude towards life giddy and unattending. But, when it comes to relationships, personal willfulness hardly ever matters.
It's… it's just like that, myriads of fragmented moments, of chatting under the linden tree with a gang of friends, of packing up under the yellow light to set off for another city, of an apprehension towards the unknown of the future, of a regret that fails to die with the past, of piano keys, of porns, of the orange juice, of the anonymous tunes sung at the shower head… everything seems sensible in their moments; yet when put together, all the frames, they are just beyond me, leaving me humbled by the grandeur and minusculity of an organism's journey.
Thursday, August 4
8/4
Today, while feeling formidably lost as usual, I decide to jot down a few things on the page. Actually it wasn't today when I made such a decision; I have been trying to come up with something for at least a few weeks. The environment, I suspect, simply has changed, leaving less and less room for acts like this one that won't put forth anything immediate, or anything at all. But whatever, though I deem writing an agonizing process, and my works mundane and borderline intolerable, from them, strangely I still indulge a fair amount of pleasure.
Recently my most noteworthy event has been the internship at E.ON. I had always thought that words like "career", "job", and "internship" are antidotes to my writerly pursuit. And indeed, in it I have thus far see nothing particularly penetrating nor inspiring. Corporations are just places where a large amount of ordinary people get to maintain their livelihoods, and a few elites, while unwavering in their own elevation, try to be at the same time cautious and respectful towards the things they don't necessarily cherish. However, I must admit, I have found the internship quite fulfilling, to such an extent that I detest calling it an internship. I prefer it be called a job, and I an employee. Only on the seventh floor of Jägerstraße have I seen a tangible glimmer of hope, of finally having an income to call my own, of taking responsibility, and of gaining, once again, the privilege of relaxing after work. I also see real people, with whom I have only acquainted, struggling in their respective forms to come in terms with life. They don't truly love their jobs - no one would genuinely do, but they don a level of professionalism that has gradually blended in with skin, with only a trace of fatigue in their smiles to remind me that they are human, and they are humane.
Recent developments didn't afford me a lighthearted mood. Since I realize, that what I have found fulfilling is only transient. What's not transient, are the conditions that have been engraved in me since I made the decision to set off for Germany. These are the conditions of indebtedness, of poverty, of the feeling of being naturally disadvantaged in many ways, and of having to pretend, imperfectly, that none has happened. The polarizing ideologies of the world, and the misfortune of finding no book that accords my taste, among many other things, further dampened my lowness.
Occasionally though, like a baby girl bursting into tears over a bar of candy, I would burst into humor simply to entertain the people at the lunch table. I mock stupidities and tell jokes that are objectively funny, and make everyone around me laugh. I tease about an Excel mistake and delight in it, wholeheartedly, committedly. It seems that, after all, I could still be an interesting person.
The girl from Bavaria, a third generation tenant to reside in my landlord's apartment, left yesterday. She borrowed the iron from me to prepare for her job interview on Monday, and went away unannounced. For a moment I still had the impression that, behind the locked doors she was still there - perhaps sitting on the bed where I used to sleep, behind the rack of laundry hung to dry. But she's indeed gone. Her door veiled open like an old wound, revealing the inside - no more clothes, computers or mugs, only an array of old furnitures, covered in a layer of dust that was once scattered amongst the air, remained. A profound emptiness suddenly struck me, once more, once more, I'm the only person standing to bear - I'm the immovable for I have nowhere else to move to; I'm the endurant for I have to endure; and I seem strong for if I'm weak, I'll most certainly perish in an unnoticeable way.
Inside my room and inside my office are two divergent worlds. If in them there is anything constant it must be a struggling soul, whose back is bent forward to gaze, to see and to hope, who was once interesting but became less interesting due to life's weight. He's exhausted, bleeding and in constant, mildly excruciating pain, but he's still fighting, he's still alive, his stance is still, as always, tall and upright.
Recently my most noteworthy event has been the internship at E.ON. I had always thought that words like "career", "job", and "internship" are antidotes to my writerly pursuit. And indeed, in it I have thus far see nothing particularly penetrating nor inspiring. Corporations are just places where a large amount of ordinary people get to maintain their livelihoods, and a few elites, while unwavering in their own elevation, try to be at the same time cautious and respectful towards the things they don't necessarily cherish. However, I must admit, I have found the internship quite fulfilling, to such an extent that I detest calling it an internship. I prefer it be called a job, and I an employee. Only on the seventh floor of Jägerstraße have I seen a tangible glimmer of hope, of finally having an income to call my own, of taking responsibility, and of gaining, once again, the privilege of relaxing after work. I also see real people, with whom I have only acquainted, struggling in their respective forms to come in terms with life. They don't truly love their jobs - no one would genuinely do, but they don a level of professionalism that has gradually blended in with skin, with only a trace of fatigue in their smiles to remind me that they are human, and they are humane.
Recent developments didn't afford me a lighthearted mood. Since I realize, that what I have found fulfilling is only transient. What's not transient, are the conditions that have been engraved in me since I made the decision to set off for Germany. These are the conditions of indebtedness, of poverty, of the feeling of being naturally disadvantaged in many ways, and of having to pretend, imperfectly, that none has happened. The polarizing ideologies of the world, and the misfortune of finding no book that accords my taste, among many other things, further dampened my lowness.
Occasionally though, like a baby girl bursting into tears over a bar of candy, I would burst into humor simply to entertain the people at the lunch table. I mock stupidities and tell jokes that are objectively funny, and make everyone around me laugh. I tease about an Excel mistake and delight in it, wholeheartedly, committedly. It seems that, after all, I could still be an interesting person.
The girl from Bavaria, a third generation tenant to reside in my landlord's apartment, left yesterday. She borrowed the iron from me to prepare for her job interview on Monday, and went away unannounced. For a moment I still had the impression that, behind the locked doors she was still there - perhaps sitting on the bed where I used to sleep, behind the rack of laundry hung to dry. But she's indeed gone. Her door veiled open like an old wound, revealing the inside - no more clothes, computers or mugs, only an array of old furnitures, covered in a layer of dust that was once scattered amongst the air, remained. A profound emptiness suddenly struck me, once more, once more, I'm the only person standing to bear - I'm the immovable for I have nowhere else to move to; I'm the endurant for I have to endure; and I seem strong for if I'm weak, I'll most certainly perish in an unnoticeable way.
Inside my room and inside my office are two divergent worlds. If in them there is anything constant it must be a struggling soul, whose back is bent forward to gaze, to see and to hope, who was once interesting but became less interesting due to life's weight. He's exhausted, bleeding and in constant, mildly excruciating pain, but he's still fighting, he's still alive, his stance is still, as always, tall and upright.
Saturday, July 23
7/23
I particularly like the moment when I turn off the computer, and all the hustles and bustles of what I have been watching settle down. In the ending of it all there's a certain color that pertains to my intellectual landscape, an expressive but colorless color.
I enjoy watching YouTube videos, pornographies, and in general anything online with considerable delight. Yet at the same time I'm always faintly aware that, whatever is depicted in those videos, while probable and vivid, isn't always true. They could be real, factual and objective events, yet they may not be true to me the same way a wheel is not true to a leg - they serve an identical goal, yet are completely divergent in design and construction.
If in these videos I seek energy, arousal and joy, it is in the aftermaths of them that I find relief, comfort and reassurance. After all, for all these years, I was able to carry on precisely because I spared myself the foolhardy notion of having to belong, so that whenever something uncanny happens, I could always have a rest in the philosophical smughole I dug for myself. Uncanny things, and the refusal of them, or rather, to put it in a more pertinent way, the reluctant acceptance of them are quite commonplace in a range of issues that I deal with. So over time, a code of conduct has been cultivated in me to take precaution in everything I encounter, that I'll be ready when they precipitate on me. This precaution, I figure, while made with the soundness of a reasonable mind, is what prevents me from calming down, and settling in, and what causes the anxiety that propels me forward.
If briefly I allow myself to look into the past when I was more innocent, I would see essentially only two things - beauty and deception from one angle, and dereliction and neglect from all the others. I used to fabricate the former as truth, and deprecate the rest as marginal and unimportant. For it is always in the former I feel a sense of sanity, coziness, or to be more accurate, from the warmth of lying on a tiger's stomach. It is not a terribly suitable way to live I entirely know, but if otherwise left on the meager, greenless soil I'm usually left with, I face no option but to either live like a salvage or die. These were once very hard questions, existential questions indeed. And only now do I have the leniency and composure to ask them.
But despite having spent an enormous amount of time probing for answers to these questions, I concede to admit that in both the questions themselves and the attempt to answer them, lies a youthful sentimentality similar to that of a sexual attraction, where the minuscule distinction of organs is enlarged to form the basis of the type of human relationship we almost religiously uphold.
I have always been firmly opposed the concept of a morality test, simply because human morality itself is an exclusive social construct that becomes invalid without context. Now, I emerge to become an opponent of questioning the meaning and teleology of life, for the meaning and teleology of life is, likewise, a social and mental construct. I believe, a truly intelligent person therefore would be able to avoid these questions altogether and indulge himself in the shallower but more quantifiable pursuits of education, family and wealth, although whether I am that person remains unknown.
Compared with other people I know, many of who could be considered exceptionally capable, I seem much more prone to retain a level of self-consciousness where there shouldn't be. One ought not to worry about the insignificance of life while creating PivotTables in Excel sheets; one ought not to deplore the rudimentariness of human sexuality while masturbating; one ought not to think eating animals and keeping them as pets as utterly incompatible facts.
The main reason, I have discovered, is that I have passion in nothing. Nothing realistic has ever interested me so much that I would fully allow myself to be passionate about it. And hence, what sustains me now is but a mere and visceral sense of shutting up, and carrying on.
I enjoy watching YouTube videos, pornographies, and in general anything online with considerable delight. Yet at the same time I'm always faintly aware that, whatever is depicted in those videos, while probable and vivid, isn't always true. They could be real, factual and objective events, yet they may not be true to me the same way a wheel is not true to a leg - they serve an identical goal, yet are completely divergent in design and construction.
If in these videos I seek energy, arousal and joy, it is in the aftermaths of them that I find relief, comfort and reassurance. After all, for all these years, I was able to carry on precisely because I spared myself the foolhardy notion of having to belong, so that whenever something uncanny happens, I could always have a rest in the philosophical smughole I dug for myself. Uncanny things, and the refusal of them, or rather, to put it in a more pertinent way, the reluctant acceptance of them are quite commonplace in a range of issues that I deal with. So over time, a code of conduct has been cultivated in me to take precaution in everything I encounter, that I'll be ready when they precipitate on me. This precaution, I figure, while made with the soundness of a reasonable mind, is what prevents me from calming down, and settling in, and what causes the anxiety that propels me forward.
If briefly I allow myself to look into the past when I was more innocent, I would see essentially only two things - beauty and deception from one angle, and dereliction and neglect from all the others. I used to fabricate the former as truth, and deprecate the rest as marginal and unimportant. For it is always in the former I feel a sense of sanity, coziness, or to be more accurate, from the warmth of lying on a tiger's stomach. It is not a terribly suitable way to live I entirely know, but if otherwise left on the meager, greenless soil I'm usually left with, I face no option but to either live like a salvage or die. These were once very hard questions, existential questions indeed. And only now do I have the leniency and composure to ask them.
But despite having spent an enormous amount of time probing for answers to these questions, I concede to admit that in both the questions themselves and the attempt to answer them, lies a youthful sentimentality similar to that of a sexual attraction, where the minuscule distinction of organs is enlarged to form the basis of the type of human relationship we almost religiously uphold.
I have always been firmly opposed the concept of a morality test, simply because human morality itself is an exclusive social construct that becomes invalid without context. Now, I emerge to become an opponent of questioning the meaning and teleology of life, for the meaning and teleology of life is, likewise, a social and mental construct. I believe, a truly intelligent person therefore would be able to avoid these questions altogether and indulge himself in the shallower but more quantifiable pursuits of education, family and wealth, although whether I am that person remains unknown.
Compared with other people I know, many of who could be considered exceptionally capable, I seem much more prone to retain a level of self-consciousness where there shouldn't be. One ought not to worry about the insignificance of life while creating PivotTables in Excel sheets; one ought not to deplore the rudimentariness of human sexuality while masturbating; one ought not to think eating animals and keeping them as pets as utterly incompatible facts.
The main reason, I have discovered, is that I have passion in nothing. Nothing realistic has ever interested me so much that I would fully allow myself to be passionate about it. And hence, what sustains me now is but a mere and visceral sense of shutting up, and carrying on.
Thursday, June 30
6/30
Since it is rationally untenable for me to capriciously give up whenever something fails to please me, and also, since I cannot afford to resort to hatred, self-pity or slack in light of a quandary, I must find some other things that bring me comfort yet at the same time satiate my need for verity and expediency.
Many of my colleagues have the fortune to be brought up in religion. They find great joy and purpose in the companionship and rituality of the otherworldly affairs. And others, pampering in melodramas and reality shows, enjoy the ease of not having to think. I'm one of those who, while disputing the former and abhorring the latter, seek to derive consolation from forms that only speak to a few. Literature, classical music, and punk rock, these almost utterly useless and "pussy"-like pursuits are the ones to chastise me when I sink to self-derogation, to sing me lullaby when I wake up in fear of life's weight, and to encourage me when I despair in mistake, failure or impatience. They are the benevolence that has been left with me to cherish.
I needn't reminder that I had not the privilege of a sound environment, of a caring family, or of a likable circle. And these circumstances have perhaps been embedded so deeply within me that now I tend naturally towards withdrawal and timidness. For the people who touch my outward sincerity at the surface, I'm too exuberant and dry; for the rest who reach a little deeper, I become like a substandard Russian nesting doll, crumbling and deforming with each layer. This is my reality, proclaimed in an ever foreboding, inescapable tone.
So, having neither the snug protection of family and friends, nor the establishment of study and career, I'm hung mid-air, grappling with what appears to be a vestige of the passion that drove me here, and of the shred of light I thought I would be welcoming. Tenacity, the imaginary cigarette I sometimes smoke downstairs, and the occasional text messages to nudge my leg, are all but the fragile, evanescent norm I upkeep.
But with the ultimate got-ya question to any literary folly, "what's the point", I would just apologize and begin to chuckle and laugh uncontrollably. Haha, look at the anachronism, the naivety, the self-importance, and the whines to no other's interest. Look at them, quite funny actually.
Just this morning, I have realized that there are many things in the apartment I dwell that hadn't caught my attention and were beginning to. The mangoes left on the fridge to dry, the dirty dishes unwashed, and the eternal floor stain that always comes back despite the landlord's scant effort to cleanse it. I had considered these traits of the apartment physically disconnected from me, that even though I maintain a fair level of dishevel on my own, it is due to another entirely different reason. And I'm wrong, wishfully so. There appears to be, certain uncertain harmony between what I could have for myself and who I am.
I have always had the peculiar sensitivity to where I belong and where I want to go. However, it never occurs to me that, indeed, such sensitivity is rather already a dumbing down of reality than an acute, factual awareness of it. Only this morning, in the things I've long smelled and seen, does it presents itself clearly to me.
Among other things I've likely known, I take literature simultaneously as a selfish means and as a noble end. I dress myself in two-piece wool suit and dangle the employee card every day precisely because while they are now mine, they could as well not be.
For the foreseeable future though, I'd keep writing whenever I feel the need to complain, keep dressing formally whenever I still work for E.ON, and keep being self-righteous albeit I yet am.
Many of my colleagues have the fortune to be brought up in religion. They find great joy and purpose in the companionship and rituality of the otherworldly affairs. And others, pampering in melodramas and reality shows, enjoy the ease of not having to think. I'm one of those who, while disputing the former and abhorring the latter, seek to derive consolation from forms that only speak to a few. Literature, classical music, and punk rock, these almost utterly useless and "pussy"-like pursuits are the ones to chastise me when I sink to self-derogation, to sing me lullaby when I wake up in fear of life's weight, and to encourage me when I despair in mistake, failure or impatience. They are the benevolence that has been left with me to cherish.
I needn't reminder that I had not the privilege of a sound environment, of a caring family, or of a likable circle. And these circumstances have perhaps been embedded so deeply within me that now I tend naturally towards withdrawal and timidness. For the people who touch my outward sincerity at the surface, I'm too exuberant and dry; for the rest who reach a little deeper, I become like a substandard Russian nesting doll, crumbling and deforming with each layer. This is my reality, proclaimed in an ever foreboding, inescapable tone.
So, having neither the snug protection of family and friends, nor the establishment of study and career, I'm hung mid-air, grappling with what appears to be a vestige of the passion that drove me here, and of the shred of light I thought I would be welcoming. Tenacity, the imaginary cigarette I sometimes smoke downstairs, and the occasional text messages to nudge my leg, are all but the fragile, evanescent norm I upkeep.
But with the ultimate got-ya question to any literary folly, "what's the point", I would just apologize and begin to chuckle and laugh uncontrollably. Haha, look at the anachronism, the naivety, the self-importance, and the whines to no other's interest. Look at them, quite funny actually.
Just this morning, I have realized that there are many things in the apartment I dwell that hadn't caught my attention and were beginning to. The mangoes left on the fridge to dry, the dirty dishes unwashed, and the eternal floor stain that always comes back despite the landlord's scant effort to cleanse it. I had considered these traits of the apartment physically disconnected from me, that even though I maintain a fair level of dishevel on my own, it is due to another entirely different reason. And I'm wrong, wishfully so. There appears to be, certain uncertain harmony between what I could have for myself and who I am.
I have always had the peculiar sensitivity to where I belong and where I want to go. However, it never occurs to me that, indeed, such sensitivity is rather already a dumbing down of reality than an acute, factual awareness of it. Only this morning, in the things I've long smelled and seen, does it presents itself clearly to me.
Among other things I've likely known, I take literature simultaneously as a selfish means and as a noble end. I dress myself in two-piece wool suit and dangle the employee card every day precisely because while they are now mine, they could as well not be.
For the foreseeable future though, I'd keep writing whenever I feel the need to complain, keep dressing formally whenever I still work for E.ON, and keep being self-righteous albeit I yet am.
Sunday, June 26
6/26
"How can a knowledgeable person be truly happy without detachment, isolation and pretense?" has been the question that I started to ponder in the past few days. As it seemed to me, whenever I had felt happy in these few years of my life, I was intertwined either with romance or with the lesser-mind, or with a particular professional pursuit whose very foundation is inhumanity itself.
People like me often inherit a habit, save the correctness debate aside, to be able to remain unaffected in light of changes, turbulences and mire. After all, that's how they emerge from the constraints of their reality, and more often than not, the constraints of themselves, to carry on the journey that befits their goal. Yet, the deeper I dive into such a habit, the clearer it becomes to me that this journey is a lonesome one. I've met some like-minded people, some of whom I appreciated and admired greatly. But they all, without exception, seem to content in their own state of contrivance where the majority are but bemused babies, the morality an inevitable yet artificial fruit of human civilization, and that love, friendship, passion, and spite biochemical products that only drive the material part of a human soul. Mind, to them, and to a certain degree, to me, is where the truly transcendental, divine intellect rests.
I have been wrenching myself, that I couldn't derive joy from Facebook or beer or festivals, that I couldn't bear a conversation that has no value or has no end, that I watch Brexit only with cold, calculated and contemptuous neglect, and that, even during the very few times I weep, I weep not to the benevolent acts that would normally cause a man to weep, but to a voluntary urge of feeling humane. As if to the all of my emotions, most of them are merely intricate designs to be performed with a cultivated sincerity likened to that of a seasoned actor. Only the bewilderment, the wrench, and a secretive and abstract yearning to be like the common folks remain. These emotions are so deeply hidden, and well-tailored, that even when completely put out there and exposed, they won't have any discernible weight on my psychological scale. To most people, I probably am living in an unnecessarily idealistic world. But at the same time, they could know too, that living in their world, is my own idealistic twang.
Unlike the many of whom I know, who have chosen various fields and crafts to pertain, I haven't. I'm not interested in artificial intelligence, or linguistics, or physics, or HR, or FinTech, or anything written on my list of interests on LinkedIn for that matter. I'm only interested in using my capability to gain the resources to fulfill. To fulfill what needs or will I truly don't know. Only in the immediate future do I know that I need to care about things that I don't like to acknowledge I have, like career, debt, and tuition fees. For unlike the rest of whom I know, in my mind are only mediocre, sometimes even pathetic misgivings. Therefore, I cannot have faith in the nobler things that are too distant to me; only in the reversion of suffering, of material lack, and of not being able to afford to eat does my faith flower.
Ugh! Ugh! But the grand schemes of things, of these arrangement that have been statistically allocated to me, they are quite interesting. They represent to me the many facets others would never have the chance to peek in; in this playing field of mine are ranches, discarded shoes, noodle packages, beer bottles and dead batteries. These are what I have. Neither inferior nor superior to the shiny stadium or meager land some others may have. I work out my own arrangement, contribute my own effort, shed my own sweat, to make it artistic and deep.
But who knows? Someone could have come and put a pair of glasses on anything, and yell, "look, this is art! This is artistic!"
For after all, who are we but a pair of glasses with life.
People like me often inherit a habit, save the correctness debate aside, to be able to remain unaffected in light of changes, turbulences and mire. After all, that's how they emerge from the constraints of their reality, and more often than not, the constraints of themselves, to carry on the journey that befits their goal. Yet, the deeper I dive into such a habit, the clearer it becomes to me that this journey is a lonesome one. I've met some like-minded people, some of whom I appreciated and admired greatly. But they all, without exception, seem to content in their own state of contrivance where the majority are but bemused babies, the morality an inevitable yet artificial fruit of human civilization, and that love, friendship, passion, and spite biochemical products that only drive the material part of a human soul. Mind, to them, and to a certain degree, to me, is where the truly transcendental, divine intellect rests.
I have been wrenching myself, that I couldn't derive joy from Facebook or beer or festivals, that I couldn't bear a conversation that has no value or has no end, that I watch Brexit only with cold, calculated and contemptuous neglect, and that, even during the very few times I weep, I weep not to the benevolent acts that would normally cause a man to weep, but to a voluntary urge of feeling humane. As if to the all of my emotions, most of them are merely intricate designs to be performed with a cultivated sincerity likened to that of a seasoned actor. Only the bewilderment, the wrench, and a secretive and abstract yearning to be like the common folks remain. These emotions are so deeply hidden, and well-tailored, that even when completely put out there and exposed, they won't have any discernible weight on my psychological scale. To most people, I probably am living in an unnecessarily idealistic world. But at the same time, they could know too, that living in their world, is my own idealistic twang.
Unlike the many of whom I know, who have chosen various fields and crafts to pertain, I haven't. I'm not interested in artificial intelligence, or linguistics, or physics, or HR, or FinTech, or anything written on my list of interests on LinkedIn for that matter. I'm only interested in using my capability to gain the resources to fulfill. To fulfill what needs or will I truly don't know. Only in the immediate future do I know that I need to care about things that I don't like to acknowledge I have, like career, debt, and tuition fees. For unlike the rest of whom I know, in my mind are only mediocre, sometimes even pathetic misgivings. Therefore, I cannot have faith in the nobler things that are too distant to me; only in the reversion of suffering, of material lack, and of not being able to afford to eat does my faith flower.
Ugh! Ugh! But the grand schemes of things, of these arrangement that have been statistically allocated to me, they are quite interesting. They represent to me the many facets others would never have the chance to peek in; in this playing field of mine are ranches, discarded shoes, noodle packages, beer bottles and dead batteries. These are what I have. Neither inferior nor superior to the shiny stadium or meager land some others may have. I work out my own arrangement, contribute my own effort, shed my own sweat, to make it artistic and deep.
But who knows? Someone could have come and put a pair of glasses on anything, and yell, "look, this is art! This is artistic!"
For after all, who are we but a pair of glasses with life.
Tuesday, June 21
6/21
How friendships have actually played out for me has taken a great toll on their meaning. But perhaps, there is no such thing as meaning apart from the concrete, tangible reality itself, or rather, to shed a different light, meaning has always been a sort of elevation that is well sought after, but never entirely found.
Like art, which I regarded highly, and still strive to. It wasn't until very recently have I realized that art is a surrogate figure for me. It's where I resort to when the shiny, hopeful, and worldly things have failed. Only in art did I acquire a sense of righteousness that had otherwise been denied me. But these, these semi-congratulatory, semi-consolatory things, are indeed feeble things. They don't feed me, provide me any monetary support, fulfill any social responsibility, or purchase any BVG ticket. They exist but signify only when they're disconnected from a corporealness I once so ardently yet foolishly despised. I am me, always the person with the whim, the mortality, and the wickedness. This is a fact that, no matter how much literary deviation is added into it, won't change.
For these few weeks, or these few months indeed, I seem to have boarded a trek onto an entirely different course from what I would have dared to imagine. Judging from the perspective of contempt, I'm evidently pursuing very base an agenda. Yet judging from the usual standpoint of any usual office clerk, leading a life that has a routine is a blessing, a decency hardly mentioned in the arts where turbulence and grudge rein.
Is it fortunate? Does it befit my faith where there is none? These are hard questions for me to answer, and probably because they are more hard than they are important, I wouldn't need to care.
For look at me! Look at me! I'm no longer condescending to life! I'm condescending to art! Or to a modernist plague that has bewildered me for so long with its appearing salvation. No longer, no longer, as I put my hands in the suit pockets, swagger across the Gucci store, swipe the employee card on the security door, and go to work.
It is quite curious, now that I cannot write other than when I cannot sleep. The act of writing has been relegated, marginalized, and gradually rendered unimportant. If the words I've written betray any emotion, then I must have indeed deviated from a lot of them. I have come to be one of those people, on one of the subsistences to my distaste. But there's nothing I could make up for it, since I regret none of my decisions, and am rightfully persevere in my pursuit, to the end of which is fruitful or not I cannot tell. I'm already so pitiful as to routinely confront the reality of having to delight in KFC, one of the most soulless consumptions out there and which I readily savor. After all, of the many treats KFC is perhaps the most affordable. Even though the moment I sat done with a bucket of 18 wings, I chanted hence shall I indulge in thy sadness, I immediately began to decry as the near 12 EUR cost has been way past the daily monetary limit I set for myself.
Life could be intriguing precisely because it befuddles. Back when, so I always say, I was younger and more clueless about things, I used to revel in a sort of carefreeness so thorough that it astounds me, and not the "astound" in a calmly joking sense when I say "your eagerness to mate astounds me", but in a more dumbfounding, flabbergasting way. Supposedly I'm more knowledgeable, more adept at waddling through the many serpentinities of life. Yet surprisingly I'm neither happier nor more settled. Worse, I'm often irritable and sad, to such an extent that reminding myself of these emotions has become a taboo which I rarely touch, rarely see and rarely acknowledge. I dodge the many questionings because I think, when the answers are revealed, I don't have what it takes to endure.
But of course, aside from worrying about some gaffes I committed during work, nothing much.
Like art, which I regarded highly, and still strive to. It wasn't until very recently have I realized that art is a surrogate figure for me. It's where I resort to when the shiny, hopeful, and worldly things have failed. Only in art did I acquire a sense of righteousness that had otherwise been denied me. But these, these semi-congratulatory, semi-consolatory things, are indeed feeble things. They don't feed me, provide me any monetary support, fulfill any social responsibility, or purchase any BVG ticket. They exist but signify only when they're disconnected from a corporealness I once so ardently yet foolishly despised. I am me, always the person with the whim, the mortality, and the wickedness. This is a fact that, no matter how much literary deviation is added into it, won't change.
For these few weeks, or these few months indeed, I seem to have boarded a trek onto an entirely different course from what I would have dared to imagine. Judging from the perspective of contempt, I'm evidently pursuing very base an agenda. Yet judging from the usual standpoint of any usual office clerk, leading a life that has a routine is a blessing, a decency hardly mentioned in the arts where turbulence and grudge rein.
Is it fortunate? Does it befit my faith where there is none? These are hard questions for me to answer, and probably because they are more hard than they are important, I wouldn't need to care.
For look at me! Look at me! I'm no longer condescending to life! I'm condescending to art! Or to a modernist plague that has bewildered me for so long with its appearing salvation. No longer, no longer, as I put my hands in the suit pockets, swagger across the Gucci store, swipe the employee card on the security door, and go to work.
It is quite curious, now that I cannot write other than when I cannot sleep. The act of writing has been relegated, marginalized, and gradually rendered unimportant. If the words I've written betray any emotion, then I must have indeed deviated from a lot of them. I have come to be one of those people, on one of the subsistences to my distaste. But there's nothing I could make up for it, since I regret none of my decisions, and am rightfully persevere in my pursuit, to the end of which is fruitful or not I cannot tell. I'm already so pitiful as to routinely confront the reality of having to delight in KFC, one of the most soulless consumptions out there and which I readily savor. After all, of the many treats KFC is perhaps the most affordable. Even though the moment I sat done with a bucket of 18 wings, I chanted hence shall I indulge in thy sadness, I immediately began to decry as the near 12 EUR cost has been way past the daily monetary limit I set for myself.
Life could be intriguing precisely because it befuddles. Back when, so I always say, I was younger and more clueless about things, I used to revel in a sort of carefreeness so thorough that it astounds me, and not the "astound" in a calmly joking sense when I say "your eagerness to mate astounds me", but in a more dumbfounding, flabbergasting way. Supposedly I'm more knowledgeable, more adept at waddling through the many serpentinities of life. Yet surprisingly I'm neither happier nor more settled. Worse, I'm often irritable and sad, to such an extent that reminding myself of these emotions has become a taboo which I rarely touch, rarely see and rarely acknowledge. I dodge the many questionings because I think, when the answers are revealed, I don't have what it takes to endure.
But of course, aside from worrying about some gaffes I committed during work, nothing much.
Sunday, April 3
4/3
It was a green slumber; a thread of sunlight laid harmlessly on the pillow. The air was distinctly fresh. Even the sound of passing cars on the nearby street appeared to be more audible. It had been a while since he had awakened. Though even he himself failed to discern the exact moment when consciousness was regained. Just like the many days and nights before, tiresome worldly issues once again alerted him in the morning. What to think he hadn't determined. There was just a vague sense of urgency, of having not to fall asleep, of work.
And he swayed, after putting down the scorched phone from the windowsill, tentatively to the right to see - the black overcoat drooped from where the rack was hung; chopsticks, ketchup bottle, and unfinished juice from yesterday were scattered all over. All seemed too clear and real to believe. Imagination had taxed so much of his ability to perceive, that when beautiful things were put forth in front of him, he not only failed to appreciate them, but would also begin to feel a sense of disillusionment, as for him, imagination was all he had, and yet it had always tended to represent to him a disconnection from reality, a disconnection which he gradually learned to denounce.
He got up, and blathered aimlessly for four hours, from 1 PM to around 5, during which he wrote a couple of motivation letters and resumes, and decided to take shower, a familiar place of which he had written. And all of sudden, it occurred to him as he was soaping his leg that the shower felt a bit different now. From the first shower in downtown Wuxi he had only remembered distantly, to the much better ones in Jacobs University, singing became the only constant convention that he got to indulge. But he had listened to the head-banging, youthful Green Days instead of the ball-sacking, hackneyed Joyce Manor, to the befuddled Radiohead and Blur instead of the flirtatious Reflector and Hedgehog, with the exception of, perhaps, NPR. Its familiar intonation of "this is N-P-R" followed by a pointless but nonetheless catchy "a whole new way" has continued to captivate him even when many others have ceased to. But maybe because the frequent but abject name of Donald Trump repulsed him, he lost much of the drive of having to pretend to care.
Soon, as was seen retrospectively, the night befell again. And he resumed his habit of taking a walk downstairs, circling the park. This habit was begun as soon as he had arrived here. He thought that taking walks calmed him, and that perhaps hidden within it was certain transcendent meaning, like an epiphany in Buddhism or a redemption in Christianity. Thus far he'd seen none. But indeed he enjoyed these walks fondly. He put his hands in the pockets and galloped forth with what seemed to be a conviction rarely seen in his usually doubtful, uncertain world. And after all, he pondered, that might be what these walks were about in the first place.
He then dreamed, when his body slid between two street lamps, of a trapped eternity, where no weight was to be borne, no riddle was to be solved, no tear was to be shed, and nothing was to be changed. He'd just tango on with this wonderful solitude. There would be pathos and catharsis, wild rejoices, thoughtful gazes, pounding hearts, and reckless believes. He would be in company.
After all, he assured himself gently, it wasn't hurtful. He managed his smile as if it was a word to be put on the page, folded his sleeve as if it was a note to be sung, looked up, and tangoed on.
And he swayed, after putting down the scorched phone from the windowsill, tentatively to the right to see - the black overcoat drooped from where the rack was hung; chopsticks, ketchup bottle, and unfinished juice from yesterday were scattered all over. All seemed too clear and real to believe. Imagination had taxed so much of his ability to perceive, that when beautiful things were put forth in front of him, he not only failed to appreciate them, but would also begin to feel a sense of disillusionment, as for him, imagination was all he had, and yet it had always tended to represent to him a disconnection from reality, a disconnection which he gradually learned to denounce.
He got up, and blathered aimlessly for four hours, from 1 PM to around 5, during which he wrote a couple of motivation letters and resumes, and decided to take shower, a familiar place of which he had written. And all of sudden, it occurred to him as he was soaping his leg that the shower felt a bit different now. From the first shower in downtown Wuxi he had only remembered distantly, to the much better ones in Jacobs University, singing became the only constant convention that he got to indulge. But he had listened to the head-banging, youthful Green Days instead of the ball-sacking, hackneyed Joyce Manor, to the befuddled Radiohead and Blur instead of the flirtatious Reflector and Hedgehog, with the exception of, perhaps, NPR. Its familiar intonation of "this is N-P-R" followed by a pointless but nonetheless catchy "a whole new way" has continued to captivate him even when many others have ceased to. But maybe because the frequent but abject name of Donald Trump repulsed him, he lost much of the drive of having to pretend to care.
Soon, as was seen retrospectively, the night befell again. And he resumed his habit of taking a walk downstairs, circling the park. This habit was begun as soon as he had arrived here. He thought that taking walks calmed him, and that perhaps hidden within it was certain transcendent meaning, like an epiphany in Buddhism or a redemption in Christianity. Thus far he'd seen none. But indeed he enjoyed these walks fondly. He put his hands in the pockets and galloped forth with what seemed to be a conviction rarely seen in his usually doubtful, uncertain world. And after all, he pondered, that might be what these walks were about in the first place.
He then dreamed, when his body slid between two street lamps, of a trapped eternity, where no weight was to be borne, no riddle was to be solved, no tear was to be shed, and nothing was to be changed. He'd just tango on with this wonderful solitude. There would be pathos and catharsis, wild rejoices, thoughtful gazes, pounding hearts, and reckless believes. He would be in company.
After all, he assured himself gently, it wasn't hurtful. He managed his smile as if it was a word to be put on the page, folded his sleeve as if it was a note to be sung, looked up, and tangoed on.
Monday, March 7
3/7
Two months twenty seven days after I had made the decision to set off on my own, I sat on a steel chair outside of a Starbucks in Bremen Central Station. I didn't order Caramel Macchiato this time, and just stared blankly at the crowds. My legs were as usual crossed; occasionally I would switch posture to ease the sore induced by a prolonged immobility. I kept staring until all the voices and chatters were reduced to mere hisses and sounds. Sudden outburst of laughters seemed to occur, rather infrequently so it did startle. The blond girl in the Burger King across from the corridor seemed ossified - her smiled appeared to halt and the way she drank from her straw. Her eyes were staring in another direction, presumably into nothing because she was laughing, and quickly contained herself to resume sipping soda.
Two black women, to my right, greeted in a language unknown to me. Now three of them, joined by another black woman, traffic controller, judging by her dress. It all startled me, like an overdone turn when I almost fell asleep, like a screechy blow of whistle in haze. I slightly awakened myself for a moment to inspect. I carefully adjusted my buttocks, and justified my move. Nobody shall notice me anyways. But it's always important just in case someone does. The train heading back to Berlin, would depart at 7:17 PM, unimaginably late from my perspective but nonetheless insignificant upon retrospect. And it's now only 5:22 PM. Still a long way to go, almost two hours.
I didn't know, since when I started to take Berlin as a symbol for return. "I go to Bremen today." "I go to Hamburg today." "I go to Hanover today." "And I go back to Berlin today." Or to be more precise, it wasn't Berlin that I would return to. It was the apartment at Christinen Street, inaccessible by public transportation, with a beat-up look so differed that of the surrounding buildings. Why then, out of all of these apartments, all of these rooms, I eventually settled in this one, facing another wall that blocked most of the view but a skim of the sky? The longer I lived in there the clearer the answer became for me, and the stronger my conviction to veil it from the knowings of the others. These were something that, after all, one cannot justify or circumvent because one ultimately belongs.
A pair of high heels just roamed by. I acknowledged their existence by paying a faint look towards the lady who was wearing them. I didn't see nothing. I was already too fatigued to distinguish even the mere clump of the shape, but I did see, a blurred shape of my sensation of having seen something. And that was where all of her significance of this life ended for me. There were simply too many people with high heels. She turned up like the myriads of the others, and quickly stepped down from the podium I constructed for her.
I yawned again, viciously so that the sleepiness purified. There were tears in my eyes without me feeling the urge to contain them. The broadcaster murmured something into the radio, information for another such and such train, the platform has been changed to such and such new number. Wasn't she as tired as I? My guess would be so. But she kept ushering her voice into the microphone as I kept typing on my keyboard. It was something not necessarily to be enjoyed; it was something that one did but out of an assurance of being alive. If the broadcaster stopped saying a word and I stopped typing on the keyboard, the agony might be gone for a while but what ensued would be a void, which would cause a stir and quickly fill up as if nothing has ever happened.
The people sitting to the right of me were gone. I didn't even remember how many batches of them were there. I needn't care, and I swore that even if I was sober, I wouldn't have noticed anything. And eventually I, like the girl in green coat, like the Syrian in jeans, like the youth with a black backpack and the elderly with a pushing cart, like every seemingly sentient beings passing in front of me, would join their inevitable ride, unto a journey towards a destination, and unto a journey again.
Thankfully, the fragrant smell from the Asian restaurant to the left of me reminded me of how beautiful everything could be. They were just cooking simple Asian foods. Though I couldn't cook like they do I knew for sure that their cooking wasn't up to bar, for I had been endowed with countless opportunities of tasting the servings of other restaurants, sensation perfected on an industrial scale.
I wondered, I truly wondered with utmost impatience, why the train still didn't arrive? Why was I still sitting here? Why time was always so annoyingly long when I needed the least of it and so mysteriously short when I craved for it. It was the will of God, I postulated, it is the will of God for human beings to have a window of yore yet to not have an actual means of firmly grasping it. Like love, which didn't exist, what I sensed, what we believed, were just our attempts to materialize something that wasn't supposed to exist, and of course, ultimately to no avail.
I got my ass up and moved around a little. And I began to taste a trace of sweetness in the back of my tongue. I was at the same time intrigued and terrified. Could it be, that my tongue had evolved to process food on its own? Or could it be, that such sweetness was indeed a precursor to something as serious as a heart attack? Meanwhile, the sweetness faded completely, never to be felt however hard I try.
Hand-holding couples, luggage-rushing men, and other anonymous people who are temporarily stranded at the train station, are all stuffing chips into their mouths, one by one, one by one, like a marching army, at its most brutal, at its most endless. Quietly at its side, I shunned away and walked back.
Two black women, to my right, greeted in a language unknown to me. Now three of them, joined by another black woman, traffic controller, judging by her dress. It all startled me, like an overdone turn when I almost fell asleep, like a screechy blow of whistle in haze. I slightly awakened myself for a moment to inspect. I carefully adjusted my buttocks, and justified my move. Nobody shall notice me anyways. But it's always important just in case someone does. The train heading back to Berlin, would depart at 7:17 PM, unimaginably late from my perspective but nonetheless insignificant upon retrospect. And it's now only 5:22 PM. Still a long way to go, almost two hours.
I didn't know, since when I started to take Berlin as a symbol for return. "I go to Bremen today." "I go to Hamburg today." "I go to Hanover today." "And I go back to Berlin today." Or to be more precise, it wasn't Berlin that I would return to. It was the apartment at Christinen Street, inaccessible by public transportation, with a beat-up look so differed that of the surrounding buildings. Why then, out of all of these apartments, all of these rooms, I eventually settled in this one, facing another wall that blocked most of the view but a skim of the sky? The longer I lived in there the clearer the answer became for me, and the stronger my conviction to veil it from the knowings of the others. These were something that, after all, one cannot justify or circumvent because one ultimately belongs.
A pair of high heels just roamed by. I acknowledged their existence by paying a faint look towards the lady who was wearing them. I didn't see nothing. I was already too fatigued to distinguish even the mere clump of the shape, but I did see, a blurred shape of my sensation of having seen something. And that was where all of her significance of this life ended for me. There were simply too many people with high heels. She turned up like the myriads of the others, and quickly stepped down from the podium I constructed for her.
I yawned again, viciously so that the sleepiness purified. There were tears in my eyes without me feeling the urge to contain them. The broadcaster murmured something into the radio, information for another such and such train, the platform has been changed to such and such new number. Wasn't she as tired as I? My guess would be so. But she kept ushering her voice into the microphone as I kept typing on my keyboard. It was something not necessarily to be enjoyed; it was something that one did but out of an assurance of being alive. If the broadcaster stopped saying a word and I stopped typing on the keyboard, the agony might be gone for a while but what ensued would be a void, which would cause a stir and quickly fill up as if nothing has ever happened.
The people sitting to the right of me were gone. I didn't even remember how many batches of them were there. I needn't care, and I swore that even if I was sober, I wouldn't have noticed anything. And eventually I, like the girl in green coat, like the Syrian in jeans, like the youth with a black backpack and the elderly with a pushing cart, like every seemingly sentient beings passing in front of me, would join their inevitable ride, unto a journey towards a destination, and unto a journey again.
Thankfully, the fragrant smell from the Asian restaurant to the left of me reminded me of how beautiful everything could be. They were just cooking simple Asian foods. Though I couldn't cook like they do I knew for sure that their cooking wasn't up to bar, for I had been endowed with countless opportunities of tasting the servings of other restaurants, sensation perfected on an industrial scale.
I wondered, I truly wondered with utmost impatience, why the train still didn't arrive? Why was I still sitting here? Why time was always so annoyingly long when I needed the least of it and so mysteriously short when I craved for it. It was the will of God, I postulated, it is the will of God for human beings to have a window of yore yet to not have an actual means of firmly grasping it. Like love, which didn't exist, what I sensed, what we believed, were just our attempts to materialize something that wasn't supposed to exist, and of course, ultimately to no avail.
I got my ass up and moved around a little. And I began to taste a trace of sweetness in the back of my tongue. I was at the same time intrigued and terrified. Could it be, that my tongue had evolved to process food on its own? Or could it be, that such sweetness was indeed a precursor to something as serious as a heart attack? Meanwhile, the sweetness faded completely, never to be felt however hard I try.
Hand-holding couples, luggage-rushing men, and other anonymous people who are temporarily stranded at the train station, are all stuffing chips into their mouths, one by one, one by one, like a marching army, at its most brutal, at its most endless. Quietly at its side, I shunned away and walked back.
Saturday, March 5
3/5
Today, feeling incomprehensibly relaxed, I ate rather less than the several days that came before. It is not due to financial reasons though, since my expenditure has become not only minimal but also routine. it is due to other reasons, I assume, perhaps all of them compounded.
I now live perfectly normally. I would eat when hungry, drink when thirsty and breathe. When the orange juice runs out I will churn downstairs to Rewe to fetch another half a dozen. And usually after dinner, or lunch if it were to be judged according to my schedule, I put on my leather shoes and take a walk along the main road at Rosa-Luxembourg Platz. Interesting things might happen there, and delight me in the time after sunset.
Unfortunately, or likely not, during the evenings I no longer play computer games. After spending almost an entire day last weekend on them, I decide that it is not that appealing a pastime afterall. At the meantime, there is the void of having denounced my previous pastime while not finding a new one that congests me. It is an apt time to set off again for something refreshing and new, like the nearby sushi bar that is mentioned to me a few weeks ago and of which I am quite interested in, or the Italian restaurant I have seen earlier, where the gentlemen and their spouses dined, oblivious to the matters outside, or Mama India, with a tremendous logo design. I have always admired that. Though from the look of it, it might not be authentically Indian.
The room feels a little chilly as I am writing this and quickly warms up as I close the window. A deliberate arrangement that is - an iPhone with its flashlight on behind my laptop, and the familiar icon of iTunes playing Mozart in the background, for my enjoyment. I also keep the newly changed lightbulb closed in the main lamp. The room isn't too unsightly when well-lit, but after all there are too many varieties of objects on a desk as small as mine.
I intend to sleep before 1 AM today, since in the coming Monday I have a 4:30 train towards Bremen to get the work permit. However, conscious enough that sleeping early has never been a successful task for me, I submit to the good-old sleep late tactic, while entirely free of feeling guilt in doing so. I'd probably doze off well before expected anyways. And what other pursuit do I have worthwhile tomorrow even if I don't sleep late?
Two days ago, when I woke up I had a stiff neck. It came so casually that I thought it will be gone in no time. It turns out that I am still unable to comfortably turn my head. How beautiful must it be! How beautiful must it be if somehow tomorrow I could wake up without it.
Here, in this rented room once full of grandiose aspirations I take my time to write, to listen to music, to drink juice, to sustain myself. No one knows it better than I do. "I am still here; I am still here." Thusly I call.
Eh foolish young man. The party is over. Let's light-up the cigarette, sweep the floor and wash the dishes. Behold, behold, truth to be told, who doesn't have youth. Under the umbrella in the puddles of rain we sigh, without either hope or regret, the cap of the bottle, the collar of your coat, say good night and o' tomorrow!
I now live perfectly normally. I would eat when hungry, drink when thirsty and breathe. When the orange juice runs out I will churn downstairs to Rewe to fetch another half a dozen. And usually after dinner, or lunch if it were to be judged according to my schedule, I put on my leather shoes and take a walk along the main road at Rosa-Luxembourg Platz. Interesting things might happen there, and delight me in the time after sunset.
Unfortunately, or likely not, during the evenings I no longer play computer games. After spending almost an entire day last weekend on them, I decide that it is not that appealing a pastime afterall. At the meantime, there is the void of having denounced my previous pastime while not finding a new one that congests me. It is an apt time to set off again for something refreshing and new, like the nearby sushi bar that is mentioned to me a few weeks ago and of which I am quite interested in, or the Italian restaurant I have seen earlier, where the gentlemen and their spouses dined, oblivious to the matters outside, or Mama India, with a tremendous logo design. I have always admired that. Though from the look of it, it might not be authentically Indian.
The room feels a little chilly as I am writing this and quickly warms up as I close the window. A deliberate arrangement that is - an iPhone with its flashlight on behind my laptop, and the familiar icon of iTunes playing Mozart in the background, for my enjoyment. I also keep the newly changed lightbulb closed in the main lamp. The room isn't too unsightly when well-lit, but after all there are too many varieties of objects on a desk as small as mine.
I intend to sleep before 1 AM today, since in the coming Monday I have a 4:30 train towards Bremen to get the work permit. However, conscious enough that sleeping early has never been a successful task for me, I submit to the good-old sleep late tactic, while entirely free of feeling guilt in doing so. I'd probably doze off well before expected anyways. And what other pursuit do I have worthwhile tomorrow even if I don't sleep late?
Two days ago, when I woke up I had a stiff neck. It came so casually that I thought it will be gone in no time. It turns out that I am still unable to comfortably turn my head. How beautiful must it be! How beautiful must it be if somehow tomorrow I could wake up without it.
Here, in this rented room once full of grandiose aspirations I take my time to write, to listen to music, to drink juice, to sustain myself. No one knows it better than I do. "I am still here; I am still here." Thusly I call.
Eh foolish young man. The party is over. Let's light-up the cigarette, sweep the floor and wash the dishes. Behold, behold, truth to be told, who doesn't have youth. Under the umbrella in the puddles of rain we sigh, without either hope or regret, the cap of the bottle, the collar of your coat, say good night and o' tomorrow!
Monday, February 29
2/29
Glued to about the tip of the orange juice bottle still damp the cheap white chocolate wrap and the twice-folded tissue paper God knows its use for sure and oh the black pot still plagued by a layer of varied dregs and scraps that are impossible to rid of even by hardpressing the sandwiching sponge whatever since yesterday or even much earlier I have been sitting here speculating about it two shattered crackers of the Deutsche Bank card I couldn't really pronounce must be it not an old habit but merely a screen that rotates transformers that used to flicker with the old image of purebred of hybred dog's head dipped in composure like the glass can of honeylemon tea from Korea I suppose it shall rather be citrus peels otherwise how the heck is it not sour and is honestly dissimilar to what was once instead the reused pickle bottle with their granny's big monochromatic printed slantly under the plastic foil it tastes just different you know I don't know though it ain't going to rot before delivery it's quite a pity such sumptuous amount squandered on believes or what not today is different I shall reassure myself because it's leap day hmm what a pastime the four streets to the front of which I remember the name of only one there are of course also two bars opening till well past midnight circa one or two in the morning isn't it illegal to do so in here as I strolled with my hands twisted deep down into the pockets of the new Wellensteyn surcoat was naturally a dap damp and I was for a moment concerned what about in a few months of time it starts to stink then wasting the two hundred thirty something euro however to circle plainly around the platz what was I thinking about what conclusions to reach too many complexities and life's dopey questions to arise everything is tangled and twined and threesomed together and no single way to put forth something of worth what is the worth afterall you swore you are gonna walk at least as much as the last day in Chengdu and it's not even one tenth of it now what always better to proclaim and disclaim than to convolve above this black seat oh just recalled the Korean girl she stayed here for one or two nights thought I could’ve had an affair with her like Husain did but I didn't text message anyone I'm here not to play Rainbow Six all day yet what else is worthwhile to pursue in the end buying a train ticket is too costly for him and tram ticket for me all excuses don't want to talk with you no more what if you shoveled yourself one day cannot permit still genuinely care for a person's life I will die for you and I will live for you what muddled heads of Radwimps accented Japs who's the Turkish friend let me Facebook him oh it's Ozan where he's up after the fat cats and also Atabak he must have come back from America and saw the dump there but didn't tell me didn't even complain has it gotten so awkward for everybody or in this society nobody gives a fuck to anybody oh now Luli she was thrown over how does it feel to have slept with me on this tiny bed a secret to shed below the blue mattress are gunks that cannot be vacuumed don't scold me I did try but sorry I shouldn't kick you during the night behind the shut door those two human beings what fun they are having what fun I haven't had the privilege to have since last year this year is 2016 tomorrow must be a sunny day this is my life fuck it kiss of a woman's bottom that baby unforgettable Friday with rain at the green building never got over it even the Auschwitz lady turned out fine everything will be fine tears on your face will dry you are so beautiful you will become so ugly no make-up please remember there's no pain your body cannot process laugh always laugh on laugh on and on and on holding hands irretrievably once I hear this song you happen to hear it also an honest coincidence seventy-five percent of the second anti-pickle gel is run down but the scent and smell and flavor covered by smoke but everything lucidly painfully it is my fault I concede it is my defeat I concede but no my soul is not broken either Fuse or things in the future I will one day stand firmly on the ground again to celebrate but I have missed it how could I have missed where is the gang now as I look around where are all the steps on the snow snow has melted long ago really and all the traces are gone please stop looking you should trust it regardless nothing in you is more important than you but you my heart is clogged I don't know should I return two cans of beefs no ramen left I should still laterwards travel to Rewe to fetch otherwise I will starve the can opener the protruding color covered on the cover the unmade beddings lie so sluggishly beside the sole window and the changing sky outside woke me up in the morning in the morning my face was brightened ouch benzoyl peroxide burn stretch the pajamas and all the willow catkins flying in the air above the shambles and wasteland the powerful time I dreamed of going to Peking of going to Harvard of in Jacobs and I am eventually here Gao is tolerating with him he is supposed to be my burden I incurred him bought him whisky thought he can be dependable but no you overestimate things the shaking heads in the cheap hotel punk rock you may have never known it is inertia you know in the rose garden when the natural gas hasn't come no carrots haven't you mentioned before to me that it is harmful and dearly beloved till this day hypocrisy controversy heresy in the emergency room are you worried I certainly was not Ja Chinese dialects after all these seasons my back is bent my feet are puffy the aerated basketball I don't play albeit the court is just a minute away I don't know why I no longer play it from the big room I can see but from here it is not possible he told me I can move back but how can I move back there are no backsies everything is arranged decided determined guided settled here and it would be costly to revert them all back is it not I am not going to eat China Express Hong Kong Express again or I would but to what ends in what moods should I be doing it how was the cigarettes I apologize for my departure please don't feel anything I would haven't existed a few centuries later even with Alcor bet consolation prize red mausoleum street side vendor vending machine toll taker banker politician aging grandmother all of these recluses you won't understand you just won't but what's up with this what's up with these crying and mourning what's up with these striking piano keys what's up with these photos in Google Photos are they just rites is life just a set of rites we consciously obey for no better reason than the very obeisance itself finished downloading eleven times and all of those bumper stickers no today is not today is different last year today I haven't done a thing the chopsticks the bowl the nail clipper the red button string on the other shirt I still haven't discarded those shirts simply because I can't afford to replace them see us in poverty have something to feel proud of but listen listen you dickhead don't listen to those people you are gonna be alright on your own you are alright already I promise later this day I will be circling the platz yet again and glancing westwards o' so many things are always there the west my neck is a bit stiff while the dumpling bar's moved in well maybe just maybe from tomorrow I will all of a sudden change shape to live up to the sight of supermarket I'd mostly definitely not be able to know you in the coming months who pretends to tell the difference between a naked mute and a plated wack those two Brits though it was such elegance much education that ain't gonna fit my fried rice with egg too much rice too much egg too much salt but hey it's pretty decent filling enough carbohydrates for a day's need my brain is still functioning soundly and I have not taken multivitamin pill in days in a row and why are you wailing is the world crumbling isn't it another ordinary week of the ordinary people naturally explode spontaneously eyes popping out this is our fate I'm told the very moment everything becomes clear all hath been coincidences without tomato spice pointless to buy eggs any more actually bought ExpressVPN fruit cans Netflix renewal six unrecyclable bottles of fifty percent orange juice bought everything to my satiation see I will have nothing to purchase in the near future but let us just wait and see the luggage is open I still fail to figure out why it was so heavy in the first place big eyed in black coat like I do kedai with you no negativity I'm severely drought no matter how much I force myself to drink no I said no I will not perhaps but what comes after that no I don't want to I'm so sorry but I shan't I can't I won't the telephone has rung again somebody's knocking let him open up the door and greet hey man very nice to see you have a good day peace out luv you and the price has gone up inexplicably unfortunately too bad.
Thursday, February 18
2/19
Around the corner was the architectures' abode. Open the tattooed main door and to the right was it, with 2 refurbished mailboxes in great contrast with the replastered Berninger and Luc and Steffen. Through the window from my hasty steps, a pair of hands stroke down on a computer whose keyboard is unseen. Unperturbed, I opened the stiff door and trek in with a joint of three tomatoes, ten eggs, and a can of bubbled bamboo shoots. The apartment is on the fourth floor as usual. And today, is another tomato egg soup experiment, with sesame oil.
Rewe is still, not too far away from here. The nasty spot runner with his owner lies parallel on the ground and obsequious. While at the same moment, whoa, Berlin. And all of its clarity of air, click of pumps, and the swooshing-over of cars. 2016! Noted! Three euro sixty-two cents from my MasterCard credit card. And I stepped, rigidly, in my new leather shoes from Galleria Alexanderplatz. There appeared to be a pain, mild enough to be contained, and acute enough to be occasionally felt. It didn't matter too much. I am a man worthy of a decent, gentlemanly gait, and hence would gallop in disregard. I advanced smoothly and softly on the ragged gravel, with the black backpack full of groceries for the indulgence of this day, penis to the left of groin.
Oh well, damn, I say, yet aglad, after all, in spite of the grumbles and hassles, I am indeed back, neither color blind nor amputated, neither starved nor oppressed, only in chronically the same spot, where no cigarettes are lit and no farewell bid. In this cordial, glass-wrapped, steel-coated, aromatized room I awaited. And routinely, I thrice fondled the black cat in her neck. Let us heat up the oil, let it crackle, and pour scattered egg wash on it to calm, and stir well with the tomatoes to serve.
Tomorrow, I revolved, at 10 I must prepare myself, to pop the acnes, to drink the juice, to sit loosely in front of the laptop, and the most important of all, to spray some Axe Black deodorant. It shall be a solemn occasion in which both of us smile and calculate and nod agreeably. But, that can't go extremely well. Since you see, we haven't met, our microbes haven't synchronized, and from the nature of it, no veritable promise is to be made, and no heart-felt emotion is to be welcomed, what remains are only greetings in the moment when uttered, both of us would strive with the decades of respective training to make it ever so cute and neat and soul-crushingly affable. Seriously, Is it not, ma'am? After all, we are just making a living.
I then bent forward to glean. On the wooden tiles were the ashes, and plugged onto the handle was the foolhardy receipt sent with the longings from days ago when I haven't decided to leave. It sat snugly in the crevice, spurned with dust whenever people walk by, enlivening to decay. And there it is again, the twitch. Undaunted in my usual proclivities, I patted gently, to the aged romance in the movies. A procession of resignation in time, stripped of awe, rested on the soft-touched office chair. And I swayed in the old rhyme, rattling and feasting away.
From the everlasting to the everlasting, stories go by. In my ears now is Apple Music I subscribed for 9.99 dollar since two months ago. It blasts out of my flashy Razer Adaro DJ headphones connected to my swapped iPhone 6 Plus, loud and impassioned. The lamps out there have been eternally bright; the people have been eternally asleep; and by the time they wake up:
This is another of the endless days. And tirelessly in the afterglow, the cantor sings.
Rewe is still, not too far away from here. The nasty spot runner with his owner lies parallel on the ground and obsequious. While at the same moment, whoa, Berlin. And all of its clarity of air, click of pumps, and the swooshing-over of cars. 2016! Noted! Three euro sixty-two cents from my MasterCard credit card. And I stepped, rigidly, in my new leather shoes from Galleria Alexanderplatz. There appeared to be a pain, mild enough to be contained, and acute enough to be occasionally felt. It didn't matter too much. I am a man worthy of a decent, gentlemanly gait, and hence would gallop in disregard. I advanced smoothly and softly on the ragged gravel, with the black backpack full of groceries for the indulgence of this day, penis to the left of groin.
Oh well, damn, I say, yet aglad, after all, in spite of the grumbles and hassles, I am indeed back, neither color blind nor amputated, neither starved nor oppressed, only in chronically the same spot, where no cigarettes are lit and no farewell bid. In this cordial, glass-wrapped, steel-coated, aromatized room I awaited. And routinely, I thrice fondled the black cat in her neck. Let us heat up the oil, let it crackle, and pour scattered egg wash on it to calm, and stir well with the tomatoes to serve.
Tomorrow, I revolved, at 10 I must prepare myself, to pop the acnes, to drink the juice, to sit loosely in front of the laptop, and the most important of all, to spray some Axe Black deodorant. It shall be a solemn occasion in which both of us smile and calculate and nod agreeably. But, that can't go extremely well. Since you see, we haven't met, our microbes haven't synchronized, and from the nature of it, no veritable promise is to be made, and no heart-felt emotion is to be welcomed, what remains are only greetings in the moment when uttered, both of us would strive with the decades of respective training to make it ever so cute and neat and soul-crushingly affable. Seriously, Is it not, ma'am? After all, we are just making a living.
I then bent forward to glean. On the wooden tiles were the ashes, and plugged onto the handle was the foolhardy receipt sent with the longings from days ago when I haven't decided to leave. It sat snugly in the crevice, spurned with dust whenever people walk by, enlivening to decay. And there it is again, the twitch. Undaunted in my usual proclivities, I patted gently, to the aged romance in the movies. A procession of resignation in time, stripped of awe, rested on the soft-touched office chair. And I swayed in the old rhyme, rattling and feasting away.
From the everlasting to the everlasting, stories go by. In my ears now is Apple Music I subscribed for 9.99 dollar since two months ago. It blasts out of my flashy Razer Adaro DJ headphones connected to my swapped iPhone 6 Plus, loud and impassioned. The lamps out there have been eternally bright; the people have been eternally asleep; and by the time they wake up:
This is another of the endless days. And tirelessly in the afterglow, the cantor sings.
Monday, February 8
2/8
The door was struck open. "What for, Christian?" Buried under the hush of his bunk, he cried, "Don't you see me asleep? Now my dream is crooked!"
Nevermind, it's mid-day already after all. The sky was aglare without a sun. He held out his hand for the heater and promptly flinched. Beneath, cars were all sloping by. Only a few. Tires jostling against the ground. And he stood up to a hasty halt - "Damn this. Good morning! This is, Berlin. Again, quite right." There isn't a thing as crisp and melodious as a trumpet call back in reality. But he jittered for a second, and slumped back. Bored with his fatiguing smartphone screen, ain't got nothing to do. The Red Dead Redemption guy, he minded, was still next door, behind the eerily green city map and a layer of painted wood, hands hemmed in girlfriend. Hehe he smirked, "human tackiness", and resumed unto his screen, red and green and blue lights blasting unto his face.
But, because, you see, even on Quora, it's all lottery, and he's got an adiabatic black pot and a white plastic box with a red lid, hence all the belongings, he's got nothing genuinely to squint for - a multivitamin pill with rice, keeps a doctor away. Even not, he did not pay Techniker Krankenkasse for nothing. "To have something to bite, or to read, or not, into a navy blue money can. Fill it up, fill it up you fool." He hopped vainly under the shadow of sofa. The floor vibrated, the Spanish danced - the skirt forever white, the smile forever warm and a shredded green onion towered in the mug.
A little fume in the toilet as the light went out, he kowtowed under the flashbulb, proudly and painstakingly. Love him! Scrub it! There you go, hot and lubricated, not a cut in two decades. And the shaft is almost visible, yellow lights and a brownish silhouette, and the scratchy cat that always refuses to enter. Wow, dare you to go through.
Psst, shush, quiet, be considerate, after the Indian movie, stuffed in the short couch. And he proceeded on his heedless Apple Keyboard on Windows. No Rainbow Six: Siege today. Nothing. This plainness, nearly resigned, motherfuckers on the brink. He then made a grab on the mouse, to click through things. "It is on you, Mr. Ciaran. Totally on you." He squibbed, and guiltily lowered his head into a larger chunk of seasoned light. Remember when? The old days or whatever. It used to be clearer, even without glasses. Huh? Now there's not a way to clean, a back hum, tripping and resonant. O' Clara. Why? So tell me. Tell me yet another time, before letting it on to be modest and kind.
His arse, since two weeks, had been scorched. His back leaned on two glasses, where moisture condensed. His cloth, the same one, darkened by daytime. The breeze came in, and the shirt slightly swang. He covered his face as if someone out there was looking. Keep it on. Keep it tidy. Keep it like the old days, like the woolly hat. Stand up still like a man. Calm and young and fearless ahead, mudded and afresh. His pair of thinly chubby legs and his fingers were in company. Hung on the wall was yesterday's rim.
It was then remembered that, for this day, an old man once stood here, his neck pouchy and his jaw loose.
But triumphant.
Nevermind, it's mid-day already after all. The sky was aglare without a sun. He held out his hand for the heater and promptly flinched. Beneath, cars were all sloping by. Only a few. Tires jostling against the ground. And he stood up to a hasty halt - "Damn this. Good morning! This is, Berlin. Again, quite right." There isn't a thing as crisp and melodious as a trumpet call back in reality. But he jittered for a second, and slumped back. Bored with his fatiguing smartphone screen, ain't got nothing to do. The Red Dead Redemption guy, he minded, was still next door, behind the eerily green city map and a layer of painted wood, hands hemmed in girlfriend. Hehe he smirked, "human tackiness", and resumed unto his screen, red and green and blue lights blasting unto his face.
But, because, you see, even on Quora, it's all lottery, and he's got an adiabatic black pot and a white plastic box with a red lid, hence all the belongings, he's got nothing genuinely to squint for - a multivitamin pill with rice, keeps a doctor away. Even not, he did not pay Techniker Krankenkasse for nothing. "To have something to bite, or to read, or not, into a navy blue money can. Fill it up, fill it up you fool." He hopped vainly under the shadow of sofa. The floor vibrated, the Spanish danced - the skirt forever white, the smile forever warm and a shredded green onion towered in the mug.
A little fume in the toilet as the light went out, he kowtowed under the flashbulb, proudly and painstakingly. Love him! Scrub it! There you go, hot and lubricated, not a cut in two decades. And the shaft is almost visible, yellow lights and a brownish silhouette, and the scratchy cat that always refuses to enter. Wow, dare you to go through.
Psst, shush, quiet, be considerate, after the Indian movie, stuffed in the short couch. And he proceeded on his heedless Apple Keyboard on Windows. No Rainbow Six: Siege today. Nothing. This plainness, nearly resigned, motherfuckers on the brink. He then made a grab on the mouse, to click through things. "It is on you, Mr. Ciaran. Totally on you." He squibbed, and guiltily lowered his head into a larger chunk of seasoned light. Remember when? The old days or whatever. It used to be clearer, even without glasses. Huh? Now there's not a way to clean, a back hum, tripping and resonant. O' Clara. Why? So tell me. Tell me yet another time, before letting it on to be modest and kind.
His arse, since two weeks, had been scorched. His back leaned on two glasses, where moisture condensed. His cloth, the same one, darkened by daytime. The breeze came in, and the shirt slightly swang. He covered his face as if someone out there was looking. Keep it on. Keep it tidy. Keep it like the old days, like the woolly hat. Stand up still like a man. Calm and young and fearless ahead, mudded and afresh. His pair of thinly chubby legs and his fingers were in company. Hung on the wall was yesterday's rim.
It was then remembered that, for this day, an old man once stood here, his neck pouchy and his jaw loose.
But triumphant.
Wednesday, February 3
2/3
Perhaps my lack of inspiration is not that I'm no longer capable of writing, but that there genuinely isn't very much to write about an ordinary person's life. Nonetheless, it remains my desire to keep some track of it.
From the snowy gravel in the suburbs of Bremen to the tattoo-filled wall downstairs from my apartment in Berlin-Mitte, I seem always to be reveling in the same sense of content. I surely ain't one of those people whose daily routine is packed with emails and appointments - factually speaking, I don't even have a mode of living that can be called a routine. But I am those who, when hearing others say "he does nothing; he just drifts along", would secretly gloat - see, my life is unburdened - I have no internships to look for, no tragedy in life to cope with and no family food to miss. What else could I be asking for then?
Berlin is not a difficult place to live in. Within minutes of walk, there are an Indian restaurant, a coffee shop, and a basketball court. Although I don't usually go to any of these places, having them available in my proximity empowers me, that one day, dressed in duffle coat and calf shoes, I might spend a Saturday's afternoon in the coffee shop reading. And for now, it is not bad as well. Through the slightly smudged window to my left, I can see the yellow, complacent light coming out from the penthouse across the street - Fehrbelliner Straße it's called, with the swanky German pronunciation of the word " Straße" as if "Stalin". I would sometimes also play piano out of my laptop loudspeaker. For some reason the sound from a loudspeaker is even more vivid than from my 300-euro stereo headphones. Though often I don't understand the titles of the pieces and don't know how to read the names of the composer, my taste in piano, I could assert, is quite tolerable.
Today was one of the few days that I traveled to the more western part of the city - usually the westernmost I go is Alexanderplatz, for the corporate finance lawyers with the first complimentary hour. The conversation was pleasant. He appeared to be very intrigued by my business, and I strive to be very knowledgeable about his legal issues. I drank a glass of orange juice, and another glass of mineral water, and noticed that the window view of Raue LLP is rather magnificent - it is almost the whole panorama view of the Berlin skyline. Even the heaters in the office looked different. I promptly fetched up my cellphone and snapped a picture - too bad the lighting was not correct.
And it occurred to me, to what end was I in the office? If, like the peaceful schoolmates of mine, I stayed in the university and never left, where would I be instead? Not Berlin, evidently, perhaps Bremen, for another year or two until I graduate or my family runs out of money. Yet I was here, standing by the window of the more upscale office building of Berlin, with a glass in hand. Although after 40 minutes of meeting I eventually had to take the U-Bahn back home, back to where everything is reduced to a bag of clothes, a laptop, and several bottles of apple juice. But in me there's much more than just the photograph I've taken, there's also the freedom of having fought.
Therefore, a penthouse or an unfurnished apartment, an upscale office building or a room that isn't mine, a full set of three-piece suit or a Jeep shirt with an oversized Marktkauf discount coat, it doesn't matter to me anymore. For however this turns out, I would have the reassurance that I've been there, done that.
May God bless me and Fuse.
From the snowy gravel in the suburbs of Bremen to the tattoo-filled wall downstairs from my apartment in Berlin-Mitte, I seem always to be reveling in the same sense of content. I surely ain't one of those people whose daily routine is packed with emails and appointments - factually speaking, I don't even have a mode of living that can be called a routine. But I am those who, when hearing others say "he does nothing; he just drifts along", would secretly gloat - see, my life is unburdened - I have no internships to look for, no tragedy in life to cope with and no family food to miss. What else could I be asking for then?
Berlin is not a difficult place to live in. Within minutes of walk, there are an Indian restaurant, a coffee shop, and a basketball court. Although I don't usually go to any of these places, having them available in my proximity empowers me, that one day, dressed in duffle coat and calf shoes, I might spend a Saturday's afternoon in the coffee shop reading. And for now, it is not bad as well. Through the slightly smudged window to my left, I can see the yellow, complacent light coming out from the penthouse across the street - Fehrbelliner Straße it's called, with the swanky German pronunciation of the word " Straße" as if "Stalin". I would sometimes also play piano out of my laptop loudspeaker. For some reason the sound from a loudspeaker is even more vivid than from my 300-euro stereo headphones. Though often I don't understand the titles of the pieces and don't know how to read the names of the composer, my taste in piano, I could assert, is quite tolerable.
Today was one of the few days that I traveled to the more western part of the city - usually the westernmost I go is Alexanderplatz, for the corporate finance lawyers with the first complimentary hour. The conversation was pleasant. He appeared to be very intrigued by my business, and I strive to be very knowledgeable about his legal issues. I drank a glass of orange juice, and another glass of mineral water, and noticed that the window view of Raue LLP is rather magnificent - it is almost the whole panorama view of the Berlin skyline. Even the heaters in the office looked different. I promptly fetched up my cellphone and snapped a picture - too bad the lighting was not correct.
And it occurred to me, to what end was I in the office? If, like the peaceful schoolmates of mine, I stayed in the university and never left, where would I be instead? Not Berlin, evidently, perhaps Bremen, for another year or two until I graduate or my family runs out of money. Yet I was here, standing by the window of the more upscale office building of Berlin, with a glass in hand. Although after 40 minutes of meeting I eventually had to take the U-Bahn back home, back to where everything is reduced to a bag of clothes, a laptop, and several bottles of apple juice. But in me there's much more than just the photograph I've taken, there's also the freedom of having fought.
Therefore, a penthouse or an unfurnished apartment, an upscale office building or a room that isn't mine, a full set of three-piece suit or a Jeep shirt with an oversized Marktkauf discount coat, it doesn't matter to me anymore. For however this turns out, I would have the reassurance that I've been there, done that.
May God bless me and Fuse.