On people

This is a collection of illusions
From it springs a fountain of lies
This is your record of intrusions
Into the depth of meaningless lives

This is the hole by misplaced potential
In it lies the ocean of all sad songs sang
This is the harmony of hidden emotion
Horrific it is, but anyone who listens, can

This is your soul; made out of thought
It will know, when you make the last call
This is what it all adds up to
I giant facade that means nothing at all

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

- William Ernest Henley [1875]

A confession…

When our train hit a stranger who was tired of life or who suffers from a severe case of being at the wrong time in the wrong place and we needed to leave, I took this picture. Like everyone else, waving nervously with their mobile phones. Probably to show the people they were traveling to.

That wasn’t the reason for me.

I took it because of the girl. The cute one.
Yeah, I didn’t know I was a creep either.
She’s still cute though.

I guess I’m gone

That sounds like some random tweet.
A salesman’s airplane lifts off and he leaves the country he visited for work. He passed the border.
A user on a forum posts a posts full of swear words, and gets banned.
A superhero stares into the surprised face of a girl he saved and put on the roof of a skyscraper, as he drops himself down, and disapears in the dark.

But I guess I’m not gone in that sense. I show up at work. Although I have a tendency get late, I arrive at appointments with people.

The realisation is, that not even I know where I am. I’m gone in the sense that I don’t know anything anymore. I fail to communicate. I fail to shape time, instead of letting it pass by. I fail to predict the future or interpret the past. And the now?

I guess I’m gone.

Right now, I feel like a puppet. The puppeteers, I recognize their faces. I hear their voices. I want to look into their eyes but someone releases a string and my head falls on my chest.
See them walk and want to follow, but next to my feet lay long ropes.
My arms collapse towards the earth and with that, my chest follows.
As I lay, I cannot get up. While I know there is something left in me, right now…

… I guess I’m gone.

Standing on the shores of time, I was the voyeur who witnessed the ship burn.
Lying on the shores of time, the cruel sea washes the wreck ashore.

Why?

Goodbye dad.

Bye daddy…

Coming of Age

A mega theme in anybody’s life would probably be the days one finds identity in himself and solid ground under his feet. For someone to function properly, the ground where there is to be settled on, must be so that it is in harmony with the inhabitant’s lifestyle. A thought like this makes me reconsider the ground I’m standing on myself and wanting to move away from the ground and my current neighbors. Being in a strict Christian school and studying religious studies that promote God like a brand to me during every class, the air becomes less easy to breathe. The more and more I’ve got the feeling I’m becoming an individual, the more I wonder how long I will still manage to function in my environment. For example, I don’t really have any friends I see regularly that have thoughts – also secretly or not – like mine, whether it be about the absence of God or the liberal view on sexuality.

‘So, are you guys in kind of club or something?’ The singer curiously bends forward to our dinner room table, where a group of friends and I are having dinner. A group formed by students who joined the Christian student association I’m a part of.

‘So, you’re all Christians?’ the guy asks carefully.
Before I know it, I’m not shaking my head very subtle.

No I’m thinking not anymore.

But before I know it, I realize where I am, on what grounds I’m trying to settle. Or to say, on the grounds where my roots are and I’m not courageous enough to leave yet.
I correct my reaction, hoping not being ‘outed’ by my initial denial.
‘Yes, we all are,’ my friend tells him.

We all are. Willingly I’m still in a Christian atmosphere, a social environment that tags me as a Christian; living the Christian lifestyle; interacting in Christian friendships. It’s driving me to a point where I’m so frustrated I almost can’t function anymore. I feel like a mute, an observer, who never speaks out what she thinks. Wearing constantly a mask, it makes breathing of the damp air more and more difficult each day. Putting it in the worst way; it makes me a hypocrite.

As I’m feeling less and less comfortable, I’m hoping to find the strength to once leave this all behind and find the grounds where I can settle and carefully transplant my current roots to. Realizing my future departure, coming of age in life will most likely be leaving my religion behind me. How badly I would want this, I’m scared to death to move into the world that’s been told to be so horrible. I need to find a new belief, which will be in the goodness in all of mankind, not only those who are saved by the extern attribution they call grace.

Hope

The morning smells like a long lost memory
You know you’re one step closer to who you want to be
Remember, when not all the raindrops feel equally mild
When you wake up, you are the newborn child
All the worries and sorrows will somehow wear away;
The pace of time makes sense of them someday.

Dreams

It feels as if I grew angelic wings
But crash and burn anyway
It was only the wind in my back
That managed to get me away

What am I going to tell the man?
Whose ashes will soon blow
In the wind that pushes and pulls
Unto hills and into canyons below

But looking at the boys and girls
Go to hell, for all I care
When I don’t have a hand to hold
Or can dance with a pair

Dreaming, who did you met?
Last night there was someone
Who tried his best to get
What the world got for free

I never laid beside a blind man
With eyes shining so bright
As real hope faded in the imaginary
I woke up in a lonely bed

The Homeless’ Hopes

Philippians 3:13-14
But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

I’ve already spend too much money today.
A thought that pops up regularly in my mind, also as a response to the following question;
‘Would you buy a paper from me?’

I did expected that request, since I already spotted the saleswoman of the homeless newspaper while I entered the supermarket. Usually they – the musicians, salespeople etc, carefully guard their spot at the place where the shopping folks must’ve just gotten a load of change.

My day’d been emotionally quite heavy and it was safe to say that my little joie de vivre wasn’t that much present as I strolled out of the market, having bought a bottle of Diet Coke, and apple and too expensive chewing gum, of which the packaging just looked really hip. In my backpack there was a brand new CD and a magazine that wasn’t much of a read anyway. Moreover, I did seriously consider wasting a euro on a Pokémon key chain – I didn’t; I didn’t have a one euro coin.

‘I don’t even have enough money to buy a coffee!’
‘Oh, why not,’ I sigh, hence, today hadn’t been cheap and maybe, just maybe, a coffee would really be bought of her income. The two dark eyes light up, a smile cracks through and a I notice how peculiar, yet pleasantly bohemian her appearance actually is. I open my wallet to fetch a two euro coin and put it in the thirtysomething’s hand, that’s full of change.
‘Do you want 50 cents back?’ she asks, since the paper says it’s 1,50. It’s uncommon the salespeople actually offer change.
‘Well, yeah… you know, I’m a student and all.’ My response then hits me as I think of the luxury I’d just acquired for myself.
‘I mean… well, it’s not really like I can imagine what it’s like for you… but, well.’ I fumble my way through an excuse I really am not entitled to.
‘Ah, no, no! It’s 1,50, that’s just the price.’ I receive my change and she smiles and shakes her head, making the two pony tales in her hair look like she’s younger than she actually might be.
‘Alright, but hey,’ the prejudices, or more likely: stigma’s the homeless struggle with just pop up all in my head, ‘don’t, you know…’ I illustrate the movement of a needle with my right hand near my elbow.
‘Not at all, I ain’t even allowed too! Really, that stuff, it just brings you down.’
‘Okay, well, have a nice evening then,’ I reply as I walk off with my newspaper, that actually feels like the first thing worth buying that day.

Grabbing in my bag to look for my keys and unlock my bike, I feel a hand on my arm.
‘You know, you gotta trust in tomorrow. And that’s what keeps me going. They can come along with drugs, but you need to be strong and have faith; look forward to tomorrow.’

The homeless woman, being ignored and looked down on by the shopping audience everyday, as she tries to make a life out of a situation that’s widely accepted as hopeless, just learned the spoiled student a lesson I won’t easily forget. While running around in our society, trying to fit in the pattern of the regular student, reaching out to as many chances as I might get to make my life fit in the norm- I forgot what truly mattered. I thought the CD would make me a happy consumer, the gum would be nice to spend some money on, and the Coke would really taste better than water, but then the significance of a perspective in life became painfully clear and the person that might’ve gotten so much closer to the true understanding of living, was the one I’d suspect of being a drug addict.

I can’t reply- I’m stunned. In her position, she took the step to tell me her drive; while I’d just been plain rude by asking for a mere 50 cents and painfully personal info. Her eyes stare into the nothingless- I guess she kind of lives in her own world, but then again; which one of us was truly the homeless in our present day world?

In that instant I set a new priority: reaching for my goals. Higher goals; searching for significance in other things than temporary, materialistic pleasures. To begin; from now on- from the woman that has faith in a situation so distant from mine- I will buy every issue of the homeless’ newspaper.

I say goodbye and cycle away, but I still have one more lesson to learn:
‘And a good night’s sleep! Keeps you active; yeah, a good night’s sleep, never forget that!’

Borders Closed

Doesn’t the world feel small? When you run into a stranger who happens to have lived in the same street as you’ve ten years ago, 200 miles away? Or when some gossip has reached more ears then initially intended? Being one of the millions of human-ants crawling on this earth, I’ve always seen my world to be little, with all it’s advantages and difficulties. Born right in a prosperous country, I’m lucky to get decent opportunities to make my life work in some post-modern way. A view on life that makes most of us wonder what is out there, filling planes to destinations known from pictures in Nat Geo. Yet, does that make the world feel small? What really matters? I realized that it isn’t mankind’s relatively small physique, but emotional values that truly matter that can make this world, someone’s world, feel small.

Who could it be? I used to wonder. What could be the odds that from the millions of people that only speak my language I could just run into, find out of the blue, that one person that could make me happy?
A clear aspect of the no-one-understands-me-behavioral pattern, I believe I heard this attitude been once called in a reading. Yet I guess I can get this one from my list of aspects of me that still correspond with this pattern, because I’ve been proven wrong. And yes, it does make the world feel small.

It makes the world feel small notice that that one person that at first sight, made me gasp for air and fumble my name when we first meet, just so happens to live a few miles away. What not a single person I met so far has managed to contemplate, just now has gotten very concrete. Sticking in my mind; when I’m staring out of the window in the train, stare at the road ahead of me when I cycle home or when I even forget to get my iPod to listen to music. It happened to be my little world she popped up in.

What I have feared or have imagined for so long now has finally happened. It’s so bittersweet and confronting. The last because I guess I somehow still believed that this would all work out the socially-accepted way. The boyfriend, the kids, you know the deal. Sweet because these feelings are, well just sweet I guess. And finally, bitter. Because my world is really small. It’s hope, mankind’s trade that makes us survive the most terrible heartaches, yet can be deceiving and can bring down one to ashes. And here’s my hope; hope that when I show my feelings, stand before her with my heart in my hands it somehow doesn’t get rejected. It’s difficult to see the difference with a head in the clouds, but rationality rescues and I know that I’m clearly dealing with the false kind here. That makes my little world feel even more tiny. Because, my borders are closed. There’s a side of me that has high walls for almost everyone around me. And if they crumble and show what’s behind them, most likely, that little tiny world of mine is a ruin in no time. It’s that forced silence, the fear to show my most sincere emotions, that makes the world feel small.

In silence and trust you will find your strength.

It’s from a psalm, which one, I don’t know. Psalms, songs that serve so many purposes. To cry out, to praise, to find hope and what not more. In this one, I find comfort. While my world might be small and silent, when I cannot confide in anything anymore, it will be ruin by my own hands. From my years of silence I didn’t receive much strength, today I can begin to understand what it takes to feel the strength to move on. Learning how to trust is a difficult lesson, as it takes the step to let go of a certain degree of control. But my imagined control didn’t gain me strength, but brute force. As force made me just live it through the day and strength makes me rely on my being.

The illusion to expect a reason from people could turn out to be a delusion. So for now, a part of my world remains voiceless, but the claustrophobia is cured. Being able to surrender a part of me to a Creator that is well acquainted with my hidden world has gained me strength to have justified hope for wishing to have a larger world one day.