Notice
All of my poems are hidden for the time being, because I’m restructuring a couple of things at the moment. Sorry to my millions of fans out there, you’ll have to bear with me for a little while.
The Orrery
…you enter the first exhibition room, which is very large and flooded by sunlight broken up into pale pastel colors. Sparkling motes of dust are floating in the misty air; they look like tiny, glittering gold flakes whenever the sun touches them.
Turning your head upwards, you can’t help but marvel at the enormously high, dome-shaped ceiling. The milky pastel light seems to come from its frosted glass, and the dome is supported by thin, golden arches which frequently cross each other, creating beautiful geometric shapes.
But the ceiling itself is not the most remarkable sight in this room: This would be, of course – the exhibit.
Right in front of you, a giant orrery stretches out across a large hall, its countless metal arms and gears whirring and clicking rhythmically. The orrery base is comprised of numerous large discs which are covered by silver engravings of what seems to be astronomy-related nomenclature, constantly turning in different paces and making deep, rumbling sounds while doing so. On its base are several complex sets of bars, all of them carrying spheres which represent the celestial bodies. You can hardly contain your amazement of this miraculous wonder of craftsmanship, as the orrery does not only seem to display a single solar system, but numerous ones; countless globes in all sizes and of different materials speed past you with swishing noises, their surfaces golden, copper, silver, cobalt-blue, brass; you think you can make out a large globe of a dull leaden color in the back which appears to be covered in mathematical equations; and you make out inlays of a tiffany glass mosaic on another one, a smooth, polished sphere in onyxian black, just as it happens to swoosh past you. All of them are shining and glistening in the hazy sunlight, none looking like another, all of them unique in their intricacy.
Your guide droid politely waits in silence for a short while, until your first wave of wonder has passed. It then rolls a bit closer to you, and begins to explain. …
Situation I.
Situation: Du stehst in einem Wartezimmer, grau-grün gestrichene, sterile Wände und ein ebenso steriler, spiegelnder Linoleumboden (PVC, genaugenommen): potentiell quietschend, aalglatte Perfektion in Polyvinyl. Die Wartenden verharren in ihrer künstlichen Suspension: eine Stasis, die zeitlos ist und so lange anhält, bis du sie ansprichst. Nachdem sie ihre Starre für die kurze Zeit gebrochen haben, in der sie dir ihre vorgefertigten Textschnipsel aufsagen, fallen sie wieder zurück in ihre Position, als sei nichts gewesen. Sie sind Aufziehpuppen, gefangen in einem zeitlosen Kontinuum, einem dimensionslosen Fegefeuer.
Du siehst dich um. Es ist ein Raum – soviel steht fest. Ein steriler Raum, grau-grüne Wände, spiegelnder Fußboden, temporär pseudo-lebendige Aufziehpuppen; so weit waren wir schon. Es ist kalt. Es ist still. Keine Uhr tickt, wie man es vermuten würde, wie es meistens in Büchern steht: “Nur die Uhr tickte leise im Hintergrund vor sich hin.” Aber es tickt keine Uhr, was die Situation so im Ganzen eigentlich noch viel schlimmer macht. Es gibt nicht einmal einen Hintergrund, oder einen Vordergrund, oder überhaupt irgendeinen Grund. (Selbst der Boden ist nur noch Boden, nicht Grund und Boden, genaugenommen). Die Anwesenheit von Raum in Verbindung mit der Abwesenheit eines Grundes verwirrt und irritiert dich. Es ist ein abgeschlossener Raum: Keine Türen, keine Fenster. Von Klaustrophobie kann man trotzdem nicht sprechen, von Orientierungslosigkeit allerdings schon. Gibt es ein innen, wenn man nicht weiß, ob es ein außen gibt?
Ein Schiff wäre jetzt gut.
Ein Schiff wäre, genaugenommen, perfekt, eben weil es so absurd und eigentlich auch so nutzlos wäre: So vortrefflich fehl am Platz. Was will man schließlich mit einem Schiff in einem abgeschlossenen grau-grünen Raum ohne Türen und Fenster, auf einem spiegelglatten Linoleumboden? Weit und breit kein Meer, kein Fluss, kein Teich, See oder Ähnliches: Ja, ein Schiff, das wäre jetzt perfekt dazu geeignet, um die Absurdität dieser Situation auf eine angemessene Art und Weise herauszustellen, denn es gäbe passenderweise wohl kaum etwas Unpassenderes.
So ist das, wenn man wartet. Du lässt nicht dein Leben Revue passieren, denkst nicht an das was war oder sein könnte; im Angesicht des Katastrophenszenarios der Dinge – kognitiv gesehen, immerhin führt sich das Nachdenken über den Verlust der eigenen Denkfähigkeit selbst ad absurdum – denkst du nicht an das Schöne, das Schlechte, das Tiefgründige, das Bevorstehende, das Große und Ganze was sich letztendlich im allgemeinen Feinstaub des Kosmos verliert. Aber die scheußliche Wandfarbe, die fällt dir natürlich auf? Na klar. Panikzustand, so ist das eben. Das ist normal, keine Sorge. Es geht den meisten Menschen so, kurz vor ihrer Hinrichtung, habe ich mir sagen lassen. Das Gehirn abstrahiert, und konzentriert sich auf das Fassbare. Aber keine Angst: Es dauert nicht mehr lange, dann ist es vorbei. Dann –
Grief I. / II. / III.
At this moment, I am stricken with grief. Roland Barthes had a diary for his, when his mother died. Should I do the same? – I don’t know. I know nothing. I feel nothing but grief, omnipresent, all-consuming. It’s a dark shroud, enveloping me and slowly replacing me with itself, while I fade into oblivion. The shroud is my mourning dress: but it is an empty shell. I am only a shadow, I am transparent, I am a fleeting thought, and now I am gone. All thoughts have transformed into ungraspable wisps, dancing around in a dark forest, mis-leading travellers to their certain doom. I am one of these misguided travellers. I always have been.
—
22.7.
The silence is blinding, deafening, stifling. It is choking in the blistering heat of these still summer days. The air is thick with foreboding gloom and in a feverish disposition; it is like a heavy, leaden blanket whose weight consists of bleak apathy and a general world-weariness. No clouds which could make their way across the sky and carry the hope of a silver lining. No rustling whispers in the trees, which would carry the promise of change. No movement. Only stillness. Silence.
— 25.09.15
There’s a certain vanity involved in suffering, one would think: A sense of Weltschmerz; a noble martyrdom; a certain self-pity that elevates you above the suffering of others, making yours seem more noble, more aesthetic, treading on the sacred grounds of art. The suffering of poets and painters, it would seem, must have been a different one than that of the common people: A sublime of suffering, a divinity in desperation. But this is a shallow delusion, really.
There is no nobility in grief: it is devastating, all-consuming. It is a radical despot, choking every last flickering ember of hope until there is nothing left but cold, dead ashes. It is an inexorable, merciless storm which sucks out the breath and lifeblood of all living things and leaves nothing behind but a drained, barren wasteland.
In grief, much like in death, we are equal.
Dreaming Trees
(From: An alarming number of confessional monologues, April 8th 2015)
——————————————————-
How do you count the musings of a muse?
How do you quantify the song of a songbird? – The eyes of Argus are always watching.
Today, I let work be work and, with my eyes closed, I enjoyed the dry rain of the sycamores. Their song is eternal: it never preaches, it never judges. It simply goes on, faintly whispering its silent secrets, passing them on and on from one zephyr to the next, on a cyclic, never-ending journey.
Sometimes I wonder whether Argyle knew about all of this. I wonder if he ever asked Jupiter: “Jupiter, have you ever listened to the sycamores, and wondered what they are always on about? It’s like they know all the secrets in the world, but they’re never telling. It’s strange, you know. You never stop to think about it, and once you do, you just so happen to have passed the right moment; you miss it by just an instant. And then it’s gone, and you forget what you were thinking about; and then you shrug thinking it couldn’t have been anything important, and then you keep on going about your day. That’s just the way things go sometimes, you know. Some people never find the right moment, because they’re impatient and they never wait long enough for anything significant to happen. They lose patience. But me, I’m different I think. Sometimes, I wonder whether I miss it because I always wait for too long, and then it passes me by, and before I realize that it occurred, it’s already gone again; it went away never to return.”
And then, what would Jupiter have said?
Jupiter is not a type of many words. I wonder what he would have said, but to be entirely truthful with you, I don’t know. Couldn’t imagine. He’s a strange one, it’s often difficult to figure out what he is thinking.
And so, while the sycamores were whispering and while Argyle kept on contemplating the meaning of his existence in my imagination, the heavy curtains of nightfall began to draw over the land. Eventually, I left my secretive friends to find more elusive company: I quickly grow weary of substance and stability; of intelligible truth. I always tend to leave it for a more undefinable essence which never runs in danger of boring me with its irritable explicability. I guess I just can’t help it.
vvv
… as you are about to enter the imaginarium, a polite guide droid approaches you and greets you in an artificial, yet strangely soothing computerized voice:
Introducing: the dreams of Promethea512 and Persephone512
+ Dear valued guest,
+ please accept our warmest welcome to the overground realm of Promethea512, and the underground realm of Persephone512 respectively.
+ We hope you enjoy your stay.
+ I will be your guide droid for the day.
+ A short comment on how to navigate these pages:
+ Dreams of the Lightbringer – Companion page; accessible via the pathway which leads above ground, see sidebar to the right. Posts will include non-fictional writing and comments or discussions related to shared news articles, artwork etc. whichever content is deemed noteworthy by the curator. But see for yourself.
+ Dreams of the Sentinel – The page you are currently on. Will include art, poems, writing and other fictional musings of the curator’s own creation.
+ About the dreamers – A short explanation on “Promethea512” and “Persephone512”, to be found in the realm of Persephone512, since both are conceptual, fictional characters.
+ If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. I will remain close by.
… you enter the imaginarium in curious wonder. The droid follows you with a whirring sound; keeping his assigned distance, yet not ever falling far behind. …