Art can not be explored

Art can not be explored. Materials can be explored. Art is the result of a premeditated state translated. Art is seen in mind before seen with the eyes. You can not try and make art. You make art first closing your eyes unexpected or accidental it will come to you and stay. It will linger in your mind like a nagging nose pinch and feel like giving birth once it is finally produced right in front of you. You will recognize your art like an old friend you have met before and long lost. Thus is true for me.....

Germany 2011 - Winterlust

Oh Deutschland, wie reich und arm du bist

Wo woll Ihr hin mit euren riesen ueberfuellten Taschen? Wo muesst Ihr hin noch heute noch so schnell? Wo denn; Dass Ihr mich anrempelt und anstoesst mit starrem Blick in die Weite - ja wohin denn? Koennt Ihr mir das sagen im Licht der Weihnacht wo denn Eure Gedanken sind beim Rennen durch die Innenstadt. Ich bin neurigig und erstaunt ueber Euer Verhalten. Ach wie reich Ihr alle seit. Wie reich und arm zur gleichen Zeit. Die hell erleuchtete Strasse, ein Schaufenster Eures Erfolges. Der starre Blick ein Zeichen eurer Armut.

The truth is

The truth is - I am here

Write me a sign

If only a bird would write it in the sky
That I am to live and not to dye
If only a text would praise my day
Or an email the least to say
My body cramped up in pain
My soul praising the rain
I am waiting for a sign from dear god, dear buddha, dear higher spirits from within
It is you I am praying to be here
It is me I am missing and fearing to be near

Sunday bloody Sunday

Sunday – you used to be my favorite day. Sunday you were my lover and my friend. I anticipated you for six days and now you are here and I don’t know what to do with you. You arrived and I had no use for you, no plan, no lover to stay with long in the morning, no partner to grab for breakfast, no man to hold his hand and stroll to the usual Sunday spots, no friend to share the designer fair with. You showed some sun, you tease, but gladly there was the ice cold wind to remind me that it wasn’t like any good old Sunday, this was a lonely one. The wind kept slapping me across the face to wake up and face reality. You are gone. I missed you today like I miss the smell of German bread, I missed you today like I miss the hug of my mother, so deep, so embedded into my flesh. A sensory memory of you is stored in my skin and will not leave me, the stand by mode has not set in yet or ever will. I had a dream last night I never had before, so sensual, so vivid, so real. I spend a lot of time on your right, beautiful, naked chest. I inhaled your smell, pet you with my face, let my cheek take in your cells. I kissed you all around and it was so real, so real, so real – It was real. It was you. It was not your face, but your smell, your skin, your body, you you you all over me, and me all over you. How come you are so far and so near, how come you are there and not here.

Loosing trust - almost

Dear Judith,

Today is the day I would like you to remember me. I am you and you are me. And not only would I like you to remember this unchangeable fact, I actually want you to tattoo on your hands, arms, breasts and foot soles that I am there - always. I am screaming in your ear, whispering in your thoughts, breathing into your lungs until you will embrace me fully to the point of no return, no double thought, no second-guess. You are me and I am you. In a situation where support does not feel apparent it is near your heart and just needs to be grabbed. It is you and me as you, who will support you always. So go, move, dance, laugh, don’t look back, make mistakes, evolve. There are people in your live who do not know you the way I do and they may never will. Leave them behind, not as in leaving something valuable but as in passing an aisle in a grocery store and only grabbing the beverage you need, passing up the sodas, the coke, the sugary berry stuff and with determination getting a hold of the sparkling water. bottle Take a sip and feel how it nurtures your body not only with hydration but with the knowing that you provided exactly what was needed. Move fast now as time was wasted already, valuable time. Time is your friend in healing and your enemy right now in this time of child wish. Together we will find a balance between both and the outcome will be like eating of a buffet.
Stay strong, contact me, call for me, scream out loud for me and I promise you, I will be there.

Your truly, me as in you as in me.

Blurry pictures

I am inhaling a book right now by a terrific current German writer, Ulla Hahn, by the title Unscharfe Bilder, translated Blurry Pictures. In the book a grown woman visits her father in the retirement home and forces him to share his experience and involvement during the second world war, something he had never spoken about before, something she is out to know. She is ultimately searching for answers if her dad who was forced to fight under Hitler's regime would have had a choice in the matter and what it was like back than and if he directly contributed to someones misfortune in any way. Its funny or just another life coincidence that I got this book for Christmas since I left my house after the holidays with a stack of old old photographs from family members during the time of the war, yet not knowing still what the book was all about at the time when I found the photographs. I had gone through the box of pictures while at my parents house and got lost once again in a re-occurring question in my own head of what exactly the involvement of my relatives was in the war, if they did bad things, did they kill anyone? I had seen the pictures before of my grandfather proud and handsome, so young in his uniform, standing tall and never smiling with deeply secret eyes, but there were also new images or I was looking at them differently now. I never met my grandfather. He died shortly after coming back from the war on lung cancer, never had smoked a single cigarette in his life. I later had thoughts if he had been in contact with any gases in the war that may have caused the cancer but always kept the thoughts to myself. My grandmother, a post war widow also lost her favorite brother in the war. He was her everything growing up. With two people to mourn over she never talked about the war, never said anything but in her eyes there always remained a touch of sadness that I never forget and I always blamed it on the war. With now all my grandparents dead I have missed my opportunity to ask questions, like the woman in the book. and find out the truth and gain a real pictures of the war from my family perspective. All I have now are the pictures and only this time I am seeing some signs of concerns and possible conflict behind the images. My family is not Jewish, but also were not Nazis or so I think or hoped that there could not just be the one or other. With the grief and loss that the war had caused my family I always thought that would be enough of an explanation and justification that the war is not what my family wanted and therefore they were not on the side of Hitler. And I do know that there was a no choice scenario when both of the man from my family were called to war, to follow one leader, to obey, to execute. And I don't doubt that the consequences to rebel against would have been deadly and I am also considering the power of extremism, brainwash and perhaps that both of these man of my family strongly believed in the good behind the war, the cause behind this one mans vision, much like some people still today belief in the meaning of war. Back to the pictures. My grandfather was a musician and a conductor. The band is all in uniform. Young, handsome men with little narrow, above the lips mustache, just like Hitler's. Truthfully, they all look like him in the photo just because of that very distinct mustache. I wonder if it was fashionable at the time or really such a strong symbol for follow ship or both and if it wasn't for Hitler would we see men with such mustaches on the street today? Only with a full on Charlie Chaplin costume in combination is such manly facial hair appearance today possible. There are no pictures of fights, of dead people, of suffering, of growling, bloody scenes, no Holocaust images like we have seen them from National Geographic published much later. The pictures of my family members are portraits of persona in their best of light for the good memory and in style of posture matching the photographic ability then. I was told that for a long time back then the people of Germany did not know what was happening inside the concentration camps, especially not the ones geographically so far removed like my family in the South and neither did the soldiers at the Front know about the killings of all the Jewish people, not until later. What was distributed on the radio was purely war propaganda, nothing more. I knew that my grandfather and his brother in law were both fighting in Russia and neither of them had anything to do with capturing Jewish people, but they fought in Russia and if they actually were ever confronted with killing someone and what they saw and what they felt and what they went through - I can't even imagine. I never asked were my grandmother's brother died and how. I didn't dare. And then there is one more picture that does not leave my mind, on it my grandfather in pose with two other uniformed soldiers somewhere North/East of Berlin inside a bombed building. The building is completely empty, in the back only ruins what eluted to a former factory type unit. Nothing else, no other people, nothing at all, but three men in front of some ruins, the ground clean and white, covered with snow. And then I see it inside the photo album. In faded pencil my grandfather had written one line next to the photo, which says: And here is where we bombed the Jews. I startled reading the line for the first time, reading it over and over again with a cold shower running down my backside. And what that line really really really means, and what the truth is behind, and the event in detail I will never know, I may not want to know, but have to accept that this is part of my family history, part of what I am carrying within my conscience, part of what all German people still carry within their roots, even today. As I said, I never met my grandfather, but what I heard is that he was a loving father and husband, a kind man to all with an open heart. And on the next page there is another pictures of two homeless Russian children, who my grandfather cared for during his time there and fed and often spoke about as he worried and wondered what had ever happened to them after the war. As always there is always two sides to a story, the narrator and the one who is experiencing the tale in his/her own skin. And with that I am trying to find peace and heal some of my never ending country's grief, while also not wanting to close my eyes to how truly unimaginably horrible it was what happened there and then - to all.