New Bits and Pieces

[DieterM]

It's been a long time. I've been reading the things published but didn't take the time to post myself. That's not so good. {edit}
As a matter of fact, it's not so much a bit than two poems of mine. I wrote them when I was 15 or 16 years old.
Here's the story:

Today, I was clearing up my wardrobe. There were two plastic boxes. Full of books. Books from when I was a university student. Books about Third World Problems and Right Wing Policies and Fascist Philosophy. These were the problems I tried to think about when I was a student. These were the problems I tried to solve. Single-handedly, by writing essays and preparing speeches.
I found old papers, too. Papers I had written when I was a young boy. Poems, mainly. Poems I had written at the age of fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. I stopped writing poems when I had grown up.
It’s strange how connected I sometimes feel with that small and shy boy. Just reading those poems makes me sense the boy’s loneliness again. Reading out loud those lines makes me live those troubled years again.
Here’s two of those poems. The first one’s called ‘Ice Death’. The second one, ‘Himalaya Roses’. I’m listening to Death Can Dance while reading them.

‘The midnight sun
Crowns me in this polar night
Throwing ten shadows
I sit
I drift
With the ice

With my feet
Impatiently I scrape in front of me
Scrape the cold surface
Weeping
And my tears
Freezing

My tenth shadow
Jumps up and hurls itself into the icy ocean
The other shadows
Flee me
Disappear
Choosing thousand ways to do so

One
Digs itself into the ice
Another
Flies away
Into the rough air
The icy air

Another one I follow
Staring at it
While it turns
And turns
Closer it comes
Wipes away my tears
And carries me away

Into the cold’

___________

‘The sitar’s sound fills the hall
Rings up the Himalaya mountains high
Echoes back
From eternal ice
Crashes like a thousand daggers aglow
Into my ears

Transcendency
Meditation
Sink into yourself
Filling the motionless day
The day that under the eternal
The calm clouds
Returns into itself

My hand folded
To a prayer to time
I gaze into the mirror
See the gap
Grab it with both hands
Tear it apart

Empty dreary tunnels
Empty dreary thoughts
Empty dreary nature
A barren feeling
Hunger period
The gap is black and blind

The mirror closes back
I fall upon my knees
I promised Thee roses
Himalaya roses
I solely bring Thee thorns
Look they’ve scraped my hands bloody’

[DieterM]

A short follow-up of my online novel. I'm so busy writing a new episode each day (besides earning my life that is) that it's been quite a long time.

'Tomorrow, my friend Anne-Cécile will be here for lunch. We invited her and her boyfriend Rachid. I’m preparing a Shallot Chutney today. While cutting the shallots and weeping tears of, well, shallot-cutting, I’m listening to songs from my World Music Folder on ITunes. Actually, it’s Badem and Özlem Tekin singing. Afterwards, Seb is going to prepare a Tiramisu. Tomorrow I’m going to cook a traditional Indian Chicken Curry which will be served with Basmati Rice and my Chutney.
As for the drinks, I don’t have to worry. Rachid is going to bring wine. Better let him do it. Curious it may seem, but he must be the only sommelier of Algerian origin. Careful though: don’t call him an Arab. Rachid is Kabyle. A huge difference, as one taxi driver once told me in a long and elaborate speech.
While cutting and slicing and humming to the song Natacha Atlas is performing now on my computer, I think back to the day I met Anne-Cécile. She’s now past fifty. She’s working as a Gentle Gymnastics Trainer in a suburban Centre for Handicapped Children. She comes from a noble family. They’re barons or stuff, I think. Her family name is a long long story in itself. There are three or four parts to that name.
Anne-Cécile is a mystic and a poet. She has had a book published some years ago. Self-publishing. And, symbolically enough, it’s been over a poem that I’ve made her acquaintance. That must have been at least ten or eleven years ago.
Me and Mr. P., we had gone to Greece for the first time. We had booked a two weeks holiday in a small hotel north-east of Athens. When we arrived, it was raining. We had left our luggage in our hotel room and had walked to the nearby village. We were sitting there, in a small café off the Agii Apostoli harbour. Agii Apostoli means the Saint Apostles. The light rain was drizzling on the pergola roof, we were drinking a glass of Mythos, a Greek beer brand, and looking at the different Drachma coins. Across the sea, blurred and smudged at the edges by the rain drops, you could guess the coastline of the isle of Evbos. Notis Sfakianakis complaining in soft tunes about a long lost love on the radio. Bouzouki strumming and off-beat rythms backing his melodic sorrow.
Then, the rain stopped. The sun came out, bright and big and white, dissipating the last remaining clouds, herding them off to the north. An unearthly rainbow opened over the low houses and huts of the village. We walked back to the hotel, slowly inhaling the breeze of drying asphalt and wet earth. The salty taste of the waves was on our tongues.
Behind the hotel, there was a big garden with exotic plants, palm-trees and magnificently blooming magnolia and roses aplenty, white roses, pink roses, scarlet roses, blood-coloured roses. We fetched two chairs, walked down to the beach and sat down on the wet sand. We silently listened to the waves’ crush, watched the white foam, the swirling blue and green and turquoise waters moving to and fro.
When the sun set, we went back to the hotel. On the path leading to the building, I found four sheets of paper. Words were scrawled on them. I suddenly remembered having seen a middle-aged woman who had been sitting on a deck chair in the garden, writing and watching the sky and the plants around her. I decided to keep the papers and to try and see her during dinner.
It had been her, all right, who had lost the papers. Anne-Cécile. She had been collecting ideas, thoughts, impressions, trying to compose them into a poem. Then, a swirling wind, and her papers had been carried away. She had tried to find them, but to no avail. She was very glad I had found them. This was how our friendship started.
I’m happy to have her and Rachid for lunch, tomorrow. She’s a very appeasing, positive woman. Always looking at the bright side of life, as they say. I cut the last shallot while Sami performer Mari Boine is singing about Butterflies. '

[DieterM]

So many first times in one life. Some of them are important steps in the process of growing up, experimenting, getting wiser. Others seem just trivial. But who can say if they aren’t just as relevant?
Like the first time I was drinking alcohol. Don’t ask me when this happened. I really don’t remember.
Like the first time I smoked. My grandfather, the Communist, was smoking his pipe. We were sitting around the table with the grey resopal tabletop. I must have been a little boy then. My grandmother was making coffee on the cast iron stove. My grandfather was joking. He gave me his pipe. My mother protested, my grandfather patted my head, a ‘Go on!’ gesture. My father was laughing. Memorizing that moment, it’s as if I still had the roasted, acrid taste on my tongue.
The first kiss out of curiosity. A memory that isn’t so outstanding. I just wanted to know how it felt. There were no deeper feelings involved. This is what I got: the pressure of someone else’s lips on mine. The smell of someone else’s sour breath. The taste of someone else’s tongue in my mouth. The disgusted shiver running down my spine.
The first passionate kiss. Now, that was an experience I won’t forget. An experience that I don’t want to forget. This magic moment when our two faces got closer and closer. The smell of nervous anticipation. The first, light brushing of soft skin on soft skin. The exciting touch of a hand on my body. The last blurred look before I closed my eyes. The languid exchange of saliva. The rising desire to go further, to reach that ultimate moment of ecstasy.
The first time I travelled without my parents. We were seventeen years old. There were the four of us: my best friend, two girls. We went to Vienna. We booked a room in a youth hostel. We strolled through the city, excited and feeling adult. We were smoking cigarettes until our heads were dizzy. The last evening, we took the streetcar to go to Stammersdorf. That’s an outpost of Vienna, still within the city limits, but with the real feel of country life. We went to a Heuriger, one of those wine-taverns, where wine-growers serve the most recent year's wine. It was a funny trip because the last kilometre or so, we left the last city buildings behind us and the streetcar’s rails were leading us along in the middle of wheat-fields and grass-covered prairies. Stammersdorf itself turned out a small village with low houses. Straw-thatched roofs. Tiny windows in massive walls.
We were drinking too much wine. We were smoking too much cigarettes. We were talking too much. Louder and louder. We took the last streetcar to go back to the city centre. We had to run to get to the streetcar-stop on time. One of the girls slipped and fell down and laughed and laughed while we others were waving and screaming to make the streetcar-driver wait for us. He did and smiled jovially at our youthful gaiety and carelessness.

[DieterM]

Anecdotic glimpses of Prague. The first morning, Mikki and I were looking for a café. We’d been walking around the Old Town for roughly an hour. Now, a true Austrian can only go so far without adjusting the caffeine level in his body circuits. We found a coffeehouse near the Old Town Square and sat down. The interior was sober, vaguely Art Nouveau, all in white and black and warm brown. The chairs even looked like genuine Thonet-chairs, so our tired spirits rose. It felt like home.
When we ordered our coffees, the fiftyish American sitting to our left leaned over towards our table. ‘Sorry for interrupting, but you’d better ask for tea or a Coke. They don’t know how to make decent coffee in this country!’, he said conspiratorially and with a thick Southern slur.
Both Mikki and I were staring at the man. With his checkered flannel shirt, neckerchief, blue-jeans, cowboy boots, dense white hair, unnatural tan and protruding belly, he looked like your average Texan self-made oil tycoon. Only the Stetson was missing. We thanked him with reserved politeness and elegance and, of course, a stiff British accent to underline our difference.
Then we were looking at each other. I could almost read Mikki’s thoughts, openly reflected by his pout: ‘Yeah, go and teach us café culture, you blatant New World peasant!’ I mean, enough ghastly stories circulated about the feeble liquids they dared call coffee in the US. And an Austrian turn-of-the-century writer, Karl Kraus, had even *****ed that coffee should only be served in countries where the beverage was pronounced with a stress on the first syllable. Thus excluding de facto English-speaking countries, and Germany. Faithful to that tradition of coffee-arrogance, we simply and naively presumed that our Mister Texas here in Prague had no idea how a really ‘decent’ coffee was to taste.
Now more than ever, we wanted our cup of coffee. If only to demonstrate our solidarity with the Austro-Czech culture and to demarcate us from the US-philistine. Mikki even tsk-ed and murmured: ‘Tea, Coke – honestly!’
The American sort of snorted when he heard us place our order and mumbled: ‘Don’t come complaining – I warned you!’
The waiter brought two steaming cups. The coffee smelled strong and full-bodied and hot. You could only see a centimetre or so of the spoon before it disappeared in the deep black liquid. The only thing missing was the tiny jug of milk or cream they normally serve in Austria. We didn’t mind. We stirred in the sugar. For sure, the coffee seemed to be dense, thick and capable of waking up the dead.
We chatted amiably, waiting for our beverages to cool down. Then, we sipped. And both, we nearly spat out the mouthful of coffee we just had swallowed. We had a very hard time not to grimace, either. The Texan jock would’ve been too glad to see we did find this coffee disgusting and undrinkable. Firstly, it had been served with sugar, thus being now much too sweet. Then, most of the local coffeehouses couldn’t yet afford to import high quality products and sold the rest of their vicious Soviet stockpile. But, most importantly: we should have got information about the Prague coffee culture beforehand.
Coffee, for the Czech, is a traditional Turkish coffee. The ground coffee is IN the cup. You never stir.
We drank our cups until there was nothing left but coffee grounds. Stoically and heroically. That’ll teach ya, Texas Laddie, our stupid gesture implied. Whereas it had rather been us who had been taught a lesson here. Never judge someone by his looks. Contrary to popular belief, Texans CAN be well-informed.

[dizzydoll]

Firstly you should post your poems to the Personal Poetry Forum too, I am sure those poets would love to read them... Excellent.

I have only read the first part of your short, I have to dash but I will read the rest later as I find it an enjoyable tale. Even tho your story is full of detail, each fits well into your story without leaving one feeling they've just been bombarded with a bunch of empty words to fill in the gaps. Good job.

Very tongue in cheek.

I would only ask you allow spaces between your paragraphs, you see women need their space. lol

[DieterM]

@dizzydoll: lol, not only women, I assure you! Sorry for the bad formatting; that happens when one (i.e. silly me) does a copy-paste thingy from his blog-online-novel to this forum ;-) thanks, however, for reading and commenting :-)

[DieterM]

Séb’s mother is a sweet-tempered, generous and chatty woman in her late fifties. Underneath a peaceful surface, you sense a strong, determined character. She comes from an aristocratic family who has always rejected the choice of her heart, Sébs father belonging to the working class.

She’s a terrific cook. So far, we have eaten: the rhubarb cake. Then, a creamy vegetable soup followed by fresh trout in aspic, the trout having been fished by Séb’s father. A lunch consisting of Cassoulet, a meal with beans, goose fat, duck and sausage that is typical for the South-West of France. This evening, she plans to prepare a barbecue, bacon marinated in Mexican spices and North-African sausages, with a Morel Risotto. There again, the morels have been hand-picked by Séb’s father in the forest behind the village. We’ve had champagne, an excellent Alsatian white wine and a tasty Merlot 1997 that Séb has dug out in the parental cave.

This afternoon, it is paramount for me to go for a walk. I don’t want to put on too many kilos during my holiday week. After having washed the dishes, we set out for a long stroll. Séb’s father has already left with his tractor. He has bought cheap firewood that demands to be cut into logs and brought back home from the forest.

Behind the village, there are colza and corn-fields. We climb up a steep hill, with the dog running and frolicking in the high grass. Bees and flies and bumblebees are buzzing and zooming and droning around our heads. The sky is veiled and looks like rain, but the temperature is pleasantly smooth. Anyway, I’ve been forewarned by Séb’s father, whose slogan is: ‘The weather is always fine here in the village!’ He utters this sentence each time we arrive on the hill overhanging the village.

Cows are peacefully grazing in the wavy meadows. The rustic defile weaving through the fields and up the hill is bordered by low, blooming trees and lush blackberry bushes. Then comes the forest. We step on the narrow path, our steps bouncing on the elastic ground made of earth and pine-needles. The path heads straight into the forest’s heart. A local naturalist has brought back grains from the New World in the 19th century and planted them here. Thus, today, the path resembles a cathedral, a temple’s nave where the pillars are replaced by Douglas firs. They stand there, stately and regal and unconcerned. The light is dim and green, with oblique rays making their way through the dense foliage. You can hear birds chirping and debating high above. The undergrowth is full of activity, strange noises, scrapings, scratchings, rustlings and cracklings.

While Séb’s mother is chatting gaily away about the village life as registered these last months, I stay back to observe the luxurious nature. And my dog. Nina is zigzagging from Douglas fir trunk to Douglas fir trunk, sniffing the bark and the fir cones lying on the soft, mossy ground. The forest is rich with life, one of the most prolific hunting grounds in France. During my last visits, my hosts’ table has already been laden with local wild boar and deer. When I follow this forest path, I always sense multiple lives lifting briefly their heads to gaze at me, uninterestedly, before going on with their existences.

What with the forest womb, the green and brown and sky-blue specks around me, the relative silence of nature, the unnaturally high Douglas firs, I feel small and insignificant. I feel like a well suffered, unimportant intruder. There’s a sense of hidden purpose, of silent plans. Of a world existing without me, despite of me, without any need of me.

I sigh, at ease. That’s a reassuring feeling. Then, I join Séb and his mother again. And listen to the story of the 77-year old neighbour having committed suicide some two weeks ago.

[dizzydoll]

A very descriptive piece of writing Dieter, especially that delicious meal. I'm pleased to see you remembered the spaces. lol. But now I'm going to sound like a landlady again, by saying you can post your stories in the Short Stories section. By doing this your work will get more readers. Good job.

[DieterM]

Words, still words. You're bathing in a world of words. Mute, and silent, and unspoken words this time. Because there's nobody to whom you can say those special words. Nobody you can, nobody you want to burden with your suffering.

You've spoken to your sister, yes, you’ve done that. You've told her what has happened. You've explained that night out of the ordinary. You were sitting on her sofa in her little apartment. You were sipping the white wine she had bought for you. Your sister, always there when you need her. Always listening, always trying to understand you. The words had flown freely. They’d jostled and rushed out of your mouth. She had nodded, your sister. She’d asked sympathetic questions. She hadn’t been shocked, she’d been prepared to hear your confession. She’d already put together the bits and pieces you’d offered her before. She’d embraced your new self as easily as you had done. She’d been brave, your sister.

But your words hadn’t been words you had meant for her. It’s him you wanted to say them to. You wanted him to listen to you. You wanted him to be there. You wanted him by your side.

You want him. Full stop.

He isn’t there. He’s gone. He’s disappeared. The big city has swallowed him. You’ll never find him.

You look out of the window. The sun is high up in the sky, washing a golden-white light all over the houses and streets and cars and busses and trees and parks and monuments and statues and people. Thousands and thousands of people living their lives. Living their own special moments right now. He’s among them, somewhere out there. When he was near, there was such an air of spring about it… You think you can hear a lark, somewhere, begin to sing about it…

That song! Your song, your very personal song…

You weep. You shiver. You tremble. Your stomach is knotted. You haven’t been eating for some days now. Since he’s left you alone with your unsaid words. They roam around in your head, bump into each other, knock against your brain’s walls. You want to scream, you want to wail like a wounded wolf.

The city is so alive, pulsating with events and moments and situations. Lives are going on out there, blood is rushing through so many veins. You want to be part of it but you feel you can’t. You want to do things, to run through the streets, to fill your lungs with the late spring’s air, to smell the lilacs’ perfume in the Prater, to admire the roses in the Schönbrunner Park, to touch the olives and the white Turkish cheese and the juicy apples at the Naschmarkt. You want to laugh at the funny man in the U-Bahn, you want to watch the horses pulling the carriages in the City Centre streets, you want to stand with the Japanese tourists in front of the Hofburg, you want to be photographed with the group of pink-haired American widows you’ve followed through the Graben.

But you sit still, you sit trembling, in your chair. You look out of the window without really seeing the outside world. Your inside world is too full, too confused, too messy. You feel nauseous. Your stomach cramps. You’re hungry but unable to eat. Your gaze is haunted, your face is empty.

He has left you all alone. He has left you with too many feelings. Too many contradictions. You hate the city for being so alive. You love the city for it, too. You haven’t learned yet how to handle this. You don’t know if you’ll ever learn.

You’re going through the unsettling experience of your first love.

[DieterM]

> Another follow-up of my online-novel. If you want to read more, don't hesitate to check out the blog-adress in my Profile section. <

It’s cold in my flat. I’m listening to Philip Glass, enjoying the seemingly simple music. It’s very expressive, though. Gives me the creeps, sometimes. Makes me think, always.

I remember that day when I was a teenager. I had recently discovered Glass. I had been watching ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ on television. Had been completely taken in by the flood of breathtaking images. Fascinated by the flow of notes, the sheer obviousness of the music.

My father was a great fan of opera. My own affinity to Classical Music stretched only as far as Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’. It was the 80s. There was so much to discover in the fields of pop music. I was only starting to follow The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Smiths, Sisters of Mercy. For a teenager, a taste for Classical Music doesn’t come naturally. Moreover, in Austria you’re immersed in Mozart tunes and Strauss waltzes from birth to death. Happy Quality Music to cover the Austrian’s inborn penchant for sadness and depression. It’s true, Austria has one of Europe’s highest suicide rates.

Glass was a revelation to me. Apparently simplistic patterns, repetitions, rhythmic counterpoints. I couldn’ just google Philip Glass. Couldn’t just get to know more about him by connecting to Wikipedia. Why? Because Internet didn’t exist yet.

I went to the library. Tried to find out about Philip Glass and Minimal Music. No easy task when you only have access to a few books in a Municipal Library in a little provincial town in the middle of the Austrian Alps. There were loads of books about Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, you name the genius at least a century dead.

I finally bought the ‘Koyaanisquatsi’ album. The vinyl record, mind you. CDs still had to be invented and marketed.

Coming home. I was all alone. I sat down in the sitting room. Put the record on. Let go while listening to the solemn beginning, the man with the deep voice booming ‘Koyaanisquatsi…’

I stood up and went to the window. I looked outside. A thunderstorm was coming down the Pöls valley. Deep black clouds began to tower over the mountains. Came rushing down the steep slopes. Enveloped the trees. A threatening force, untamed and powerful. Incomprehensible and sacred.

The music was rushing trough my veins, the clouds were rushing through the sky, coming nearer, closing up on me and my universe of tunes, notes, thoughts, feelings. I could hardly bare the tension.

Lightning parted the blackness outside, lid up the valley, the houses, the fir trees, the pine trees, the meadows, the corn fields. Not a single soul was outside my window. Just me, nature, the storm, the music. The trees bent under the wind’s blasts. A deep rumbling made the building vibrate. Made the earth tremble.

Then a sudden stillness. The trees stood still. The meadows, the cornfields stood still. The universe was holding its breath.

The music was still surrounding my own private cocoon.

The grey-black-blue clouds were bulging outwards.

Then a thunderbolt, forked and menacing. Another one. The thunder booming and echoing through the valley, rolling up the slopes. One drop, then another, three, four, ten, hundred, thousand, millions of raindrops. Gushing out of the veiled sky.

I shuddered. I had understood something.

Don’t ask me what.

Some things, you understand with your mind. Some things, you can only understand with your heart. And no word can express them.