Little Things, Big Feeling

I know being where I am I should be excited about the buildings, the architecture, the history...but just quietly, I am excited that I have a kitchen to cook in, a television with one English channel that isn't just CNN and my god I'm excited to have a common space which isn't a double bed. I guess sometimes its the little things that makes the big things seem special. Nothing makes you feel less at home than listening to a selection of German, Czech, French or Italian as my night time music.

Midnight Train To Vienna

SO, Berlin to Vienna, 600km's and 10 hours to think. After 5 weeks in Berlin there have been great highs and great lows. Things of little significance which seem huge, and things of huge significance which seem little. There is certainly a vast spectrum of culture, night life and people that -10 puts in a terrible mood. My German has improved, if only to be able to keep my standards of manners slightly above the normal and to figure out how to push and pull a door to keep me from constantly looking like I cant read (Ziehen, Drucken). But now Vienna is on the cards, another cold city with a lifetime of history that my home country cannot even comprehend. So when to return, when to come home? When is enough enough? I am not even sure some nights, and other nights I wish to smell the freshly mowed grass, the sun on my skin and the sound of my family and friends in the same room.

This will all be figured out I guess on my midnight train to Vienna, lets hope it helps me give the answers I crave.

Expectations

I sometimes wonder whether they are a good thing or a bad thing. To have hopes in something to turn out the way you wish, not by pure control but by it taking responsibility for themselves as much as you would for yourself I guess. I am disappointed that sometimes I am taken advantage of, mostly because my expectations of people are often too high, or that they do not set themselves the same standards as I would myself, therefore making it very difficult to understand. Sometimes I wish, without me being angry, without me making a scene, or without me withering away you would understand the importance of friendship, and the importance of asking for help to a friend. Maybe I should not be saddened by the fact that when I do reach out, you aren't often there in the way I would be there for you. Am I to blame for that?

The New, The Old, The Dust, The Gold

Recently I have laid to rest many things, many things have now been covered like the open grave they were to me and I have healed. Time apart makes loss into an interesting thing. While I was gone some things have changed, some things are now eternal. My family laid to rest two beautiful people, poured their ashes into the same peaceful place together so that even in dust, they were as they are remembered. Together, in peace, forever overlooking the place that they watched every sunset pass for the last 60 years. It was something I never wanted to miss but something that I will never miss, for now they exist in my memory, in my heart in a way that nothing can touch. And hopefully time will not ravage my brain in the way I watched it do to someone dear to me and I will forever preserve them where they count.

I see things in the past now as they should be, where I now leave them, in a moment. In a passing second in time where the world seemed to stop just for you, and then sped right up to whisk straight past you like the train that will never again stop at your cold cement station. But its from these rare moments that we take the best, the gold. And from these moments we can also separate what doesn't matter anymore.

All this rhetorical thinking spins me in circles but I have finally found that my circle is link, that may spin round and round but it does not stop, and I will not force my hand to stop it forcefully. I am once again myself. I am no longer surrounded, nor do I need to hazey cloud that has followed me around like a lost puppy for the last 3 years. I do not need to comfort the speed of my thinking, I just need to express it.

So to things in the past, the things for the future, for the memories we hold dear and for the things that stay with us wherever we are. Home is where ever I choose to take it, and for me, finally it is wherever I am. Because those moments exist now inside me where the time can not touch them anymore.

Okay, I get it, You're a Creep

So differences in culture, in language, in up bringing. What can I pin you down too? Are you just normally an alienating, intimidating person? What about us makes you act the way you do? Alone, out of nowhere you come with the drunken saunter that reminds me of the people you avoid at 5am on your way home, to ask such strange questions. When for the last 4 weeks you have pretended that we either don't exist or we are an inconvenience. Not sure why you have just stepped over that invisible line which separated you from being yourself, a person I don't understand, to a person I am now uncomfortable around. It was your doing.

Phantom Limb

I hope you are still there

Where Time Isn't Weighed By The Clock

Movement, form, space and no space. I learnt today from Alexander Calder that reality is in the imagination of each person who sees it, and to make realistic art, you merely have to represent your perception of what you see.

I saw things today that were so organic and inorganic, that to actually perceive them both at the same time, in the same image was a very difficult experience, but altogether beautiful.

It was like watching someones dreams.

Snow like Sand

Its been almost 3 weeks now in Berlin, the time has flown like the snow across my face, each stinging moment melts away as fast as it came. I am finding a way to heal those war wounds of mine, even if in cold threatens to keep their dull ache ever so close, as if forgetting was losing. So I ache, as I walk each carefully placed step across cobble stones streets and past the paint glittered walls. I remember the way things smelt, the sounds like lullabies and nightmares for my sleeping brain. I remember the secrets, my privacy and the moments when it felt that I was on the other side of the world while sitting in my own home. And now I am in anothers home, on the other side of the world and I ache for a peace that I only find within myself on quiet summer nights, with the humid timbre in the air and only the sounds of the bugs to keep me company. What I would wish for to stroll down the streets, to walk past the house down the road where the fence is lined with a bush that smells like lollies.

But here, I find a different peace, one that seems to grab at me and shake me awake at nights with the potential of the new, the different, the exciting and the sheer scale of it all. The loneliness as it creeps in like the cold through my many stacked layers of clothing, I find a freedom that comes with anonymity. In many ways I share it, in many ways I have never shared this experience with anyone. It is mine and mine alone. Something that you can't even tough with that rough touch and velvet skin.

But what I wouldn't give right now, to be able to walk outside and smell the candied fence to walk my way to eat my Chocolate gelati at the echo dome, where I can sit in the sun and feel like I'm untouchable. The promise and pride of youth is so delicious.

An Ode To Feeling Better

Sometimes you hurt people you care about the most, and sometimes they hurt you too. BUT at the end of the day, we are human, we do stupid things and I still need you. It was more important to get over it and be a real friend, than it was to hold the grudge.

But, just don't do it again.

You Should Know Better

Muddy footprints all over the carpet
Dirt trodden right to my doorstep and through the house.

I thought I had more consideration in your life, maybe the only thing good about you and I, is me. The rest seems to be swept under the rug.

Great.

Like Valium

I guess I have been waiting for something, I guess I have trying to sit back and let the tide of life roll over me, taking me somewhere that I never guessed I would go. I think I have been fooling myself.

If I could take all that was me, I would send it across the ocean, wrapped up in a little note and forged in glass. Floating floating floating across till I am finally smashed upon some far off rocky cliff face at lands end, and I will dissolve. The ink of my being will run, and I will dilute myself, each carefully penned letter, each fragile sentence, will run. Melt into an ocean that knows nothing better than to forge on.

I could be apart of that.

Your Face Is

Please quit, it sickens me.

Scratch an Itch

Concussion, hungover, and possibly a slightly bruised ego. Gotta love the walks home from the middle of nowhere in -5, trying to tie the pieces of your brain back together. So I tried to slowly sow it back together, sat down like Peter Pan without a shadow and slowly stitched each end of myself together. I may have used a few cut outs, and un-picker here or there, little did my hands know they had no sowing ability, so I did it by feel. I sowed a place for all my friends and family, so when I returned they could add parts of them self to me again. I didn't have any room left after that, so I add another layer, for memories and for heartbreak. Maybe I should have left those parts out, but other wise I wouldn't be able to be thankful for what I have now and what I have been through to get it.

So my sewing experiment worked well. Although I sowed myself in a ball, I knew I didnt have any skills, and left myself all wrapped up, with my friends, family and sadness wrapped up so tightly I hope they never escape.