March 19, 2004

Liquid torture

Night falls, the sales girls in the stores become impatient, and there is this one entrance in a sidestreet, with a guy on a bar chair in front of it. It's my favorite place, among the three or four I know. Its walls are decorated with art, though only sometimes you notice it is actually changing. DJ's enter the podest, unfolding their speech of sound, filling the tiny cracks in the walls with crumbs from the grinding bricks.

After shaking my body of what seemed hours, I am sitting, which is one level lower than anybody else, just for a moment, until I realize it was more than just that. I can see everything that's going on. I am watching and separate, become the watcher, become an observer of flirty glimpses, a witness of couples falling apart, a surfer on the wave. And the sound and the motion and the bodies are fluid towards the end of the room. So much anticipation. So much energy. A bunch of garden hoses becoming lose under water pressure.

I am waiting, for the next drop of water hitting my skin. My eyes strive a table to my shoulder, it slowly fills up with bottles, soaked napkins and glasses. I smile, knowing, I am that glas on that table, with the remains of cranberry vodka on descending ice, slowly rocking towards the border.

Posted by Henning von Vogelsang at 07:31 AM

March 09, 2004

Piles and other mountains

I hate doing the dishes. Believe me -- while there are many things I don't like, doing the dishes is on the very top of my list. It comes right after ironing shirts and vacuum cleaning. It is one of these things that has to be done, it's coming to you, inevitable, mountains of pans, dishes and glases, piled up until they reach critical mass.

What do I hate so much about it? Is it soy sauce, olive oil and water swimming in bowls, joined by coffee, soap and soaked breadcrumbs, or is it the fact this is a job that requires so little thinking? Admittedly, I have trouble with things that require no head. Which does not mean I got the ones that do require it always right in the first place.

I am not contemplating about doing the dishes here anyway. What you do when you do the dishes is of secondary importance. It's more important what everything else of you does while you do the dishes. So usually, I am molding ideas for my projects. Or I deconstruct frustrating phone conversations I had throughout the day. The dishes happen either late at night or early in the morning. Even if doing them before coffee is worse than the worst.

Being able to do different things with your mind while your hands do the dishes is a luxury. I realize that now. Because my mind is captured by other things, things not so easy to handle. In fact, looking for a connection between something so trivial as cleaning up the traces of primary survival patterns with something that moves my inside upside down is futile. But of course, I understand that cleaning up is sort of a healing process. You change your hair color, you clean up your car or you give your dog a wash. Whatever you clean, it has a primary and a secondary reason. Not for everybody, but for everyone I know.

It was about time to do the dishes. And it was about time I made some profound changes in my life. I'm cleaning it up right now. It started more than a year ago. I didn't know where I'd be now when I started, and I learned to accept that it didn't matter. Accepting things to happen by themselves is something I always had difficulties with.

But that's the idea of it. You don't have to understand it. Just let your life unfold. Be careful it doesn't pile up until it reaches critical mass.

Posted by Henning von Vogelsang at 08:51 AM

February 21, 2004

Night Calls

Water left earth, and leaves are falling
at ground to all the crawling things,
It's evident, the night is calling,
spreading out its covering wings

Look up the sky, where clouds appear
making way to a memory of light
No rush, no lie, no truth, no fear;
here we know what's wrong and right

The covering blue is filled with tears
glittering sparks and worlds apart
Shadows grow, letting birds disappear
a stone, still warm, or is it my heart

Posted by Henning von Vogelsang at 05:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 09, 2004

When

When will I sit down and write a book? When will the stories, tumbling in my head like clothes in a dryer, come out and find their place in the hearts of their readers? When will I make prints of the photographs I like and put them in passepartouts on walls? When will I have the appartment that is made of these walls? I see it before my eyes if I close them. It's warm in the light of a late afternoon in march and the wooden floor smells of wax. When will my hands touch they keys of a piano again? When will I feel the wood of this piano vibrate by the sound of its strings? When will I take a deep breath, enjoying the shiver running down my spine as a fresh breaze comes inside a tiny window of a house, all grown over with ivy? When will I dip my toes betweeen the leaves swimming on the water of an abandoned pond behind this house? When will I sigh again before falling asleep? When will I swallow salty water as seagras strives my feet? When will I hear the bugs crawling, while sitting at a sandy, stony street in France, with nothing but the air of march around me, a dark blue sky above and a tang of earth and gras in my nose?

It just seems it is important when. But that's not true. Because I will.

Posted by Henning von Vogelsang at 12:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack