Strasbourg – May 21
Words seen on the walls and floors of the tram station underground:
Vous pensez à l’histoire. Vous pensez à ceux qui ont vécu et à ceux qui sont morts. Vous pensez aux objets et images qui racontent comment c’était. Vous essayez d’avoir les idées larges. Vous essayez de comprendre les autres. Vous essayez d’être gentil et généreux. Vous êtes très seul. Vous avez tout votre temps. Vous n’êtes pas pressé. Vous marchez dans la rue et le soleil vous réchauffe. Vous êtes heureux.
Far now, far away, but far too many one-sided conversations with you in my head.
But who are you? Are you anyone?
You know those conversations, the ones where you make up the rules, when you know what the other will say, but you still want to hear the words, because the repetition is something you trust, familiar, numbing.
Sometimes I lack the will to resolve my thoughts. I let them twist like open endings.
Do these words give you hope?
Watching the world around you as it dissolves into a second scene, where the faces melt, indistinguishable from one to the next. I like open senses. Not moving, just receiving. Noises are muffled by the panasonic surround that absorbs everyone into everything. You either focus on one instant, pinpoint its most subtle quality, trying to notice all the rotating vibrating actions that give the moment life – or, you focus on everything at once, and you hear nothing.
Does any of that make sense?
A whirring blur of choppy dialogue, French and German, it hovers around this bopping space, becomes the same. People watching people watching people. I cannot talk about myself now, only the slices of peoples’ lives that encircle me. I am only the lens, the only lens I got. My senses are not my own, they belong to the world. I study faces, invent the lives behind them, because it is better to guess a life than to know the real, pathetic truth.
Do you see your face changing?
I cannot trust the faces I believed in, because I was a character in their stories, and I am guilty of losing my identity, implicated in my own game…
Late at night, falling into wide open barren spaces, falling in love with stranger faces.
In between the curbs, scraping the stones lit up by streetlamps. I am a sensualist, and maybe I will never change.
I live and breathe all the little vibrations. I don’t like being interrupted. But I must finish the thoughts I begin, so you’ve told me a million times. Otherwise you’ll never get anywhere, just round and round in circles.
Vienna – May 24
What a wonky one that was. The architect of the creative spirit, Oh Hundertwasser, I have a crush on you! What was it he said? “Our greatest illiteracy is our inability to create.” The lines, they go spinning round, and you bent the ruler until it was destroyed. Straight lines are an abomination in our world of nature. It is our crude, scientific attempt at perfection. Oh Hundertwasser! You even had a spiral on a flag. How could I not fall for that, or your clever Palesraeli design. You were a peaceful hermit who came down from the trees, and built your identity into your constructions, for all to enjoy.
It’s not just that, or your psychedelic graphics, or your beard I could get lost in for ages. No, there is something immediately connective and convincing about your words. We are stepping outside of the places we belong, constantly pushing nature back and beyond our reach. We build high buildings, walls everywhere, we blot out the sky. We build these towers where we spend all the hours of our days, and we run out of spaces for parks.
I am sitting in a tree-lined café, just behind his colourful, bumpy building. A wild child is hopping in hysterical footsteps, running from his father, tugging at everything, clinging to the foliage like a monkey on acid.
He has blue and white striped pants, so baggy that his knees are invisible, and all you see is this waddling harmless menace. Again, another animal comes to mind… a penguin. He scurries frantically in circles, twirling in freedom. He keeps running from his parents, escaping the adult ways of sitting and staying still in slow motion. Run little one! Free from the (illegible – “chair of polite restraint?”) I take a picture. He is my favourite child in the world. For the twentieth time his legal guardian leads him back to their table, holding his hand.
I have spent the last hour or so walking to the Wurstelprater amusement park, several miles away from downtown. There is an open field on the way in, where people relax in the grass. Napping couples curled up, Turks playing chess, young and old rolling dice, telling stories in canes and suits, everyone seems to be downing beer and lighting smokes. I look up and ahead to my destination, the Riesenrad, an enormous ferris wheel that spokes the sky red.
No tickets needed, so I’m walking through the funhouse, past the zero gravity seats and bumper cars and the carousels, not taking any rides but watching the attractions, and it is a surreal feeling. There is a chill, so the park is not very crowded, and this strange haunting breath comes over me. Those eerie carnival sounds, those lifeless faces behind concession stands, I did not want to write about it.
Went into a bar, completely lost on my way to cross the Danube. I was looking for the metro station to get me back to the hostel. Opened the door to old scarred Austrian faces, completely at a loss as to why someone who could never belong to this place or this moment would step into their scene. They seemed frozen in there. A deep low voice struggled with me to find a way out. I ordered a beer and tried to look as tired as them.
No comments:
Post a Comment