time trips

it’s tuesday. november. one year ago this time, i was walking the black sand shores of Lanzarote island. now i am walking the snow of home – winter came early this year, freezing the roses and the last of the sunflowers.

but as time has it, those sunflowers have just started to grow again – in the new issue of Serene Light. here the link to the page that holds the picture, and a poem about them, written in April: almost an asana

more online moments: a month ago, i was packing bags for Crete. i knew i would stay in a place with ocean view – but had no idea how this view would turn out. well. it turned out too large for the camera. so i put a photo collage together – and just while there, came across a call for hotel moments from the newspaper “Zeit” – “time”. so i sent the panorama there.
now it’s up in time online: miramar view

plus – and this still feels strange – i did my first interview! it’s 4 pages long, and published in print in the magazine 34thParallel. there even is a preview of it online, with a travel photo (yes, that’s me in the middle!) – here the link: a journey into words

right now, i am focusing on the writing project i am part of: 7 writers from 5 continents writing a futuristic novel with entangled storylines. more about that, hopefully soon. and i am putting together the last pages of the upcoming issue of blueprintreview – as it looks, it will go live next week, and coming with a number of night moments.

it's a good time.

november

searching for words.
trying to feel the sand beneath my feet, gone now.

picking up pebbles.
remembering this poem named timeout.

cutting the last of the sunflowers.
the one that grew too late.

mixing up copy with paste, again.
which makes me end where i started.

~~

je suis symmetry

making coffee
i hear a bird, a girl
look out and fall into
a perfect moment

this symmetry of reality
meeting photography

this matching number
of day, of month

elves, it flashes through
my leafy mind, and also,
élèves.

today, je suis symmetry,
i say to the sparkling room
and wait
for another word door
to open, somewhere
in my mind.

~

halfmoon

half moon sky longing
a song of migrating birds
soon there will be snow

(posted via e-mail)

7 days

7 days to Crete. the island shore, approaching like a ship on the horizon of time. while i am swimming through a lake of things that need finishing first. painting the floor of the cellar room.
freeing the garden lawn from that bad weed. writing a travel tale for transitions abroad. putting together the 2028 letter to dzanc. and - taking time to smell the flowers. who will be gone when i return.

how many things will fit in those seven days? and - how to keep a good pace?

i will try to see it as a marathon. not starting too fast, so that i won't run out of energy halfway through.. which would be Thursday. which is - and ain't that neat - the day of Lujong. of space earth wind fire and... water.

transitions abroad, i think. they bring transitions ashore.

~

chrysan themes

october. a riot of colours, thrown in the air by flowers with names like serenades. chrysan themes. topin amburs. dew drops falling like tiny drums. bees humming, as if it was spring, not autumn.

it's gonna be a hard winter, she said.

maybe someneone should break that truth to the small sunflower who figured that these days were a great time to start growing, to weave first leaves, to develop an own curled idea of a petal.

it's gonna be life, the small sunflower answers.

~

what do you believe?

monday morning, and through my kinja, i stumble into a blog entry of my topography that opens this week with the grand question:

"So now I really want to know:
What do you believe? Do you have faith, or do you live outside it? How do you rationalize your fundamental view of the world? Can logic define it, or is something lost in translation?"

a question that is followed by thoughtful lines and more questions and quotes.

"I don’t keep a drawer of knife sharp words to define the shape of what I know. Tautology. Ignorance. Deism. How do you use the scientific method to argue the depth or scope of spiritual faith? How do you use logic as the basis for accepting or denying that which you cannot know about the movement of another person’s heart?" - Christina

“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” - Buddha

"I believe we are all spiritual beings, seeking those things that power, position, or possessions can’t satisfy. Faith is a journey. It grows when nurtured. It turns stale and stiff when ignored. All I can do is live my life in a way that speaks to the love and faith I have found, to be authentic and open as the journey unfolds." - Lyric

"I read a quote once stating that there are two easy ways to get through life: to believe everything and to believe nothing. Faith, obviously, falls somewhere in between. Which is exactly why it’s not easy. And I don’t believe it is meant to be." - Julie

~

those lines moved me. and like most, i found it equally hard to define the shape of my faith in words. for me, faith is connected to life energy. to feeling the world, to feeling with the world. to trust in life. maybe that's for me is coming from the experience that you in fact can go and leap into a white page, and there is a net of words, of stories appearting. that connection is possible, across continents, beyond words.

another thing the question made me think of - i read a zen line this weekend, written by a monk, a long time ago.

Just don’t seek from others,
Or you’ll be far estranged from Self.
I now go on alone;
Everywhere I meet It:
It now is me; I now am It.
One must understand in this way
To merge with thusness.
- Dongshan Liangjie (807–869)

it touched me. this concept of merging with the world, with the thusness of now. to not go astray and look for abstract concepts, but to take the way to learn and follow ones own heart.

it was good and unexpected, to start the new week, the new month with those thoughts, and adding my thoughts just as the church bells were ringing eight, just as the sun was rising.

~

welt ist überall

late afternoon. september winds, arriving from france, roam the trees here in the street, paint the grey sidewalks with whirls of yellow and red that keep moving. natural art, i think. leaf sculptures.

later i call a friend, and we talk about journeys to angkor and walks through autumn gardens. about long distance trips and short distance trips. about the time it takes to be in a place, to arrive there, to leave from there. leafs, i remember. leaves.

"die welt ist überall," my friend says -
"the world is everywhere."

~

world dart, blog play, ego politics

the first autumn days. temperatures dropping by 10 degrees. sun and rain and clouds, changing by the hour. on the weather page, a new link, leading to a geography game that shows the map of Europe, tells you a capital, and hands you a virtual dart to aim at the location. fun. especially east europe. here the link: Europe Dart

and more games: blogger has a new feature: a stream of photos that was just uploaded. a wild mix from all over the world, named play.blogger

apart from web games, an odd mix of news. like coloured clouds, politicians coming up with silly ideas just to make headlines - like the one who suggested to end marriages automatically after 7 years, or our inner minister who thinks virus-mails sent from the tax office might be just the thing to frighten possible terrorists. turns out he basically frightened the public. on the other side, our prime minister had the courage to invite the Dalai Lama. now she is named "witch" in the Chinese web pages. well, i thought. rather a witch with an attitude than a political-correct smalltalk politician.

now for a photo to go with this post ... how about this one, 346, taken one year ago? - i like the thought that it might pop up in playblog now, somewhere in the world.

fake fantasy memory

rita :: mae brown
comedy :: life
polar :: roses
perception :: memory
infected :: viral
fake :: honesty
relating :: three degrees
distraction :: attraction
gamble :: coins

unconscious mutterings, week 241.
& the photo.. photo friday, fantasy.

which altogehter makes it a fake fantasy memory. and makes me think of that article on neuronal scientists who discovered that our memory changes with every act of recalling it. that it connects with the situation that made us remember, and then is restored, slightly altered, in relation to the now. like a wiki entry that gets updated by current perceptions of reality. like sunlight reflected in the waterdrops of dusk.

~

listening to: Vanilla Sky
reading: Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

~

pink

minutes leap unheard
sunbeams smatter keenly, pink
cloud howls, petals blush

~

that was automatic poetry, slightly adjusted to this week's photo friday task: purple.
and more automatic musings, an oblique strategy for today:

Discover the recipes you are using
and abandon them

~

celestial tea

between night and morning
i wake from a dream
that doesn't leave a memory
get up in darkness
brew black tea

a cup later, still lost
in nocturnal musings
i open the window,
to let september air
touch my breath, lean out

and see her for the first time -
venus, dancing over dawn
while the moon sails so high
that it remained invisible
through closed glass.

~

3 unfinished thoughts

(1)
this flower, i found it here in the garden, underneath the peonies that had blossomed in April. now it is August, and this flower, it isn't even a flower yet. it is just three hairy green leaves. "and how will you grow there, in the shade?", i say. the flower doesn't answer.
so i go buy a terracotta pot to plant her into, to move her to a sunnier spot. still i worry that it is too late already, that the year won't have enough sun left for the flower to finish its growth, that it will leave her unfinished, green, without

(2)
flowers. they are female here in Germany. die Blume. she flower. the opposite of flowers are trees. they are male. der Baum. he tree. and then there is the third

(3)
it happened years ago, in another city. it was summer, she's sure of that, as the heat was standing in the street, dense and vivid, even in the late evening. they sat outside, her and a colleague, drinking another drink, basically to postpone the moment of having to step into the hotel, into solid, temperature-filled space.
maybe it was the heat that melted the line between being colleagues and being friends, she still isn't sure of it. all she knows is that at one point, they were miles beyond small talk.
"there's this concept", her colleague said, her eyes suddenly all clear and open.
"or more something like a wish for life - to never

~~~

photo friday, challenge "unfinished"

summer crossing

it's August, and i am wearing a sweater and socks. this is Germany, Middle of Europe, it really should be summer-ish here now, but temperatures are down in the cellar. and instead of sun, there is rain. and not just rain, but rainrainrain since Monday, to the point that rivers are starting to flood.

now the doorbell just rang. and i received a parcel from an online shop order. the nice thing is, they included a little inflatable gift. one that would be perfect for the season, theoretically. but now it looks both funny and sad: a blue water ball.

couldn't help it, had to take a photo of the ball, also because it oddly fits the book i am reading these days, a book that i brought from the library in the last week of July, assuming it would be the perfect read for the following month: Truman Capote's Summer Crossing.

~

photo friday, challenge "oddity"
listening to.. a band called AIR
reading.. stories in six sentences

recent publications

august. sunflower petals carried away by green birds. rain drops falling like stars. old letters in a box, taking me back to Asia. white splashes of colour on my shoes. and - words in various sizes and shapes.

- 20 minutes in berlin (short story)

- renditions of her (poem)

- rave / transition / one / swallow / asleep (5 poems)

- Arriverci (short story)

the whole list, here.

~

reading: Truman Capote, Summer Crossing
listening to: REM, Around the Sun

drip drop

rain, the weathermen had promised. the clouds arrived in the night, yet they kept all the drops for themselves, for the sky, oblivious of the earth's dryness, of the news forecast.

at noon, she went outside, and opened the lid of the water tank. she looked up to the sky one more time, one last time. then she filled the bucket, and made the way through the garden, knowing from past experience that it would start to drizzle just 5 minutes after she finished.

and it did, for whatever reason.

~

photo friday, challenge: wet

day / night

in the garden
the last of the day lilies faded
leaving emptiness & a stick of memory
a token of petals once opened then closed

like dreams tinted
with emotions, with hidden truths
revealing themselves in the night
then curling up before dawn

leaving awakeness & a hunch of the clarity
that hovers beyond this realm
of the human mind
called conscious,

this folly of evolutionatory
vagary

~

reading: Jay Rubin / Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words
rediscovering: Oasis / Born on a Different Cloud

butterfly

my arms folded, i move my body
to the left, to the right
as far as i can reach

you don't breathe into
the dephts of your being
my teacher states gently

then asks a simple,
yet intricate question -
since when is that?

i open my arms
and feel like a butterfly
for a second

i was the tallest in class
i answer, drawing my
shoulders in to explain

the ways we make
our selfs small,
my teacher says,

softly, like the wind
she tries to make us feel,
inside of us.

~

a different place

between water and stone
i step into this thought

that a place
at a different time
is a different place

just like the same place
alone / with someone else
is a different place

~

a task for my week:

to step out of the trains
and chains of thought
every once in a while

to walk slower

to listen to the inner voice
of a place, a person,
a moment

to watch
the world news
empathically

~

question of the day

is it me who is taming the garden -
or is it the garden who is taming me?

~

and the other question:
do the secondary petals of sunflowers,
the ones that develop not on top,
but along the stem,
always look like this?

and if so,
how come i never noticed it?

~