Poems by Katarina Majerhold, part 31/7/2022 When I don't want or expect anything more from her, I am happy. I am finally liberated and independent. Who even introduced me to the idea that she should give anything and be always available to me? She is also unique – she has her own life, thoughts, emotions, and actions. Let her finally afford them – whatever it may be her wish. She, too, should be liberated and independent. Mothers should never sacrifice for anyone. In my thirties, I realized that – when I read a famous female thinker. At 50, I am finally realizing that. Who instilled in us the idea that we as women are also Ivan? I also never ran after the (big) wagon and that is in the sky called Ursa Major! When you have absolutely no resentment, and you accept when she rejects you, what's more, you completely forget about her in the meantime, it sometimes happens that things turn around and the one who refused you long time ago I tell her that I don't like her now. If you have absolutely no resentment, and you accept when she leaves that she never remembered you it sometimes happens that things turn around and the one who is contacting you I tell her that I don't care about her now. When you have absolutely no resentment, and you accept that she ignores you, it sometimes happens that things turn around and the one who looked for excuses for how important she was, I tell her that I don't have time for her now. If you have absolutely no resentment, and you accept that she was unfaithful several times, she even laughed at you when she confessed to cheating on you, it sometimes happens that things turn around and the one who says she is sorry I tell her that it was hers and only her choice. If you have absolutely no resentment, you accept with a smile that one day everything sets in equlibrium, the past is no more and there is peace. I love my acquired independence, I like my self-confidence, I like my acquired self-image. I have always said that I won't be like my ancestors – I still stick to that today. I love my acquired ability, to tell in my own way how it is not to behave, not to talk, not to walk how one does not should think, feel and do. Buddha, Jesus, Confucius, Ala, Moses, Lama were not right. Feel free to think, feel and do your own way! What kind of partner do I want? Like most people. How cliché I am, right? But is anyone different? I still remember it today – a long time ago twelve years precisely when I fell in love unexpectedly –, how men and women, said to me in amazement: 'She's not beautiful at all'! I pointed out 'Who is cliché now?' Unfortunately, the love was not mutual. But an even more important question is would I choose someone else? What if I didn't really fall in love twelve years ago – if I did, would she respond to my infatuation with her infatuation? And then I remember at that time very interesting emotions and feelings, that overwhelmed me while I was listening to Schiller's song I Feel You In Everything. And I remember exactly that overwhelming emotions and feelings were not addressed to only her but they were an all-encompassing cosmic feeling of love, which applied to all beings, and especially to planet Earth, and I realized that love can be meant for any being and that love will resonate equally. And what kind of partner do I usually get? Pleasant, intelligent, beautiful, and kind. But the truth is much more than that she can be kind but not empathetic, she can be beautiful but cold, she can be intelligent but cruel, she may be passionate but unfaithful she can be attractive but calculating, and she may be calm but authoritarian. What we want and really get is misleading but in the end. it is all part of us even if we don't do the things we get. Venčeslav, smart, kind, pleasant. Ever since you came into my life it is getting better and more beautiful. More enjoyable, more loving, less aggressive, better paid, faithful and committed. You show me the beauties of the early mornings, when we are alone and except the chirping of birds on a nearby branch it is pure silence. We play a little with the scarf then you fall asleep again. Of all the animals, cats and dogs – the only winner my dearest Venčeslav. You are my star. Because I was never accepted I used to think that I should compromise for love. I don’t change for anyone today. You love me because I am who I am and not as I should be to suit your desires. Stars so self-substantiating and shining, yet so lonely. Did you know it takes eight light minutes to the nearest sun star or two million four hundred thousand miles? Just how could the stars feel love and bond with someone? If people all the resources they give for the army intended for a space program do you think we would already have space stations on the Moon or Mars? What if all the funds were spent on the education and empowerment of girls and women? Stars so self-substantiating and shining, yet so lonely. Did you know it takes four-light years to the nearest star Proxima Centauri? Just how could the stars feel love and bond with someone? If people all the funds they spend on cryptocurrencies and the stock market intended for sustainable development do you think that nature would be cleaner? What if all the funds were spent on exploited and slaughtered animals do you think there would be less violence in the world? Stars so self-substantiating and shining, yet so lonely – no wonder they look at us with such distance and indifference.
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Poems by Katarina Majerhold, part 2.1/24/2020 Ode To the Nature what men have done to you?! Trucks and trains loaded with heavy weights, oil wells on land and on the sea that drill deep into your soft tissues, dredgers boring your surface, miners shattering your core, cutting your veins and stripping naked your heart without your consent night and day. People, rushing all the time, are not willing to stop and look around to notice myriad tiny wonderful details that make their living space day and night. They are so entangled into themselves, into their daily small events they forget to see birds flying over their heads, petals whirling in the air, roses next to the fences they are walking by, stars in the night sky, plankton in the sea, stein bocks in the mountains, snakes in the meadows and swans or algs in the lakes. People are not aware or better never think that even air we breath needed millions of years of small beings to give their lives – their gifts to all of us so we can breathe now and thus be alive. And how often do people take time to observe and notice other animals or plants, their way of life, their „language“ and how they „conceptualize“ the nature. People do go more often to the nature now but do they go to learn, to gain some new insights about the nature or appreciate her more or do they go to gain again something only for themselves – to relax, to get peace from all the crowd and city noise? It is time for people to see the nature for itself - to shut the mouth up and to listen to her way of being through singing of the birds, through rustle of tree leaves, through sounds of the dolphins, through whizzing of the rattle snake, through breathe of the universe. And when you are able to see and feel all these you are aware of the miracle of life and know how to appreciate to be alive with all the myriad of other beings and things here and now even is it if for one day for what is a difference to be alive one day or 200 years as some trees are - perhaps their memory is bigger but the experience of being alive is every second the same miracle of everything that is for everyone (for it could not exist at all). Thus it is time for people to ask themselves how can we contribute to the well-being of the nature what we can give (back) to you - to the well of being for you - instead of taking from you! Ode to Cosmos The notion of cosmos and everything that represents has been always close to me, I have always had a special feeling, emotion, yearning for everything cosmical. Even more, think this yearning is universal, dwelling in everyone and everything that exists. I have always had a connection with cosmos - does this sound pretentious? I hope not and it's not meant so - and cosmos sounds and seems so big, vast... and it is and yet it feels so close and „small“ that I could almost put it inside my heart and mind and happily carry it around. I know that I'm only a tiny, insignificant particle of it, (aware that originally made from a star-like dust components) yet even this tiny part carries a cosmical spark of everything inside her heart - a sign of everything connected to everyone and everything. ---- Black and white, white and black is not grey and mysteriously gray like myst and not only black, white and gray all that is in between – is called colours. ------ After 11 years of solitude without any friends I survived. After 11 years of solitude without love and girlfriend I survived. Those were the years of emptiness, hermitage and frostiness, vastness of cosmic silence and when everything seemed upside down. I did not ask for celibacy yet I got to experience it. I did not ask for violence yet I got to experience it. I did not ask for shortage yet I got to experience it. I did not ask for disrespect yet I got to experience it. I did not ask for exploitation yet I got to experience it. I did not ask for prejudices and stereotypes yet I got to experience it. I did not ask for the connections with people who disrespect and exploit other people and beings yet I got to experience it. And then years of oblivion, that I should ignore what happened. Have can I forget? You should, I was told, for your sake and pretend we all entered into new area of great harmony while people from FB wrote to me 'ascenscion, ascenion'. For fuck sake, what and for who is that ascension?! Jedrt Maležič, 2012: A True Animist in a True Dilemma "You know when you meet someone on the street and they »recognize you« and say: omg, is that you??! And you lower your head and say: I don't think it's me". Boštjan Narat, philosopher, musician, songwriter An SMS on my pink mobile saying: »Who are you?« appears suddenly, its demanding vibrato shakes me to the bone. I begin to erase the teyt of a sender unknown to me a cosmic error, like dividing time catching me at a bad bad bad moment, driving a car foreign to me borrowed, not rented, a gift from an absent friend foe friend foe giving me the chills and a thrill in my spine making me sick and demanding of me actually know – shit oh shit, how could I even begin to meet its orders satisfactorily? I – it's all about the EYE – would love to belong, to respond to an actual name and an address, to feel and to put in a song the sameness of my people to let it get under my skin and crawl into my limbs and sigh across my chest and cry and bye and bye – it's all about this crazy fucking EYE – devour what was left of my Why and How and Who and Where my pussy riot claws I think I'll spare for days on end, just leave them there Am striving to reach for the answer and catch it somewhere in the slimy abyss of the When and the Now – using so many capital letters no one is actually going to take me seriously Someone asking me who I was, most likely a kid playing boss aiming for friendship the more the better perfect value inflation It's all about the answers and I – it's all about the I, the aself, all seing Eye of fucking Saruman Illuminati Gotham city bets and jokes– don't seem to know to grow to flow across the issue of Who knowing only who claims me as theirs as ours and not some other's piece of art. Fart. thing is, I could go anywhere and just dillute change the color of my hair and salute the obvious choice the never-ending, ever-mending shrill nightmare of butchery in the name of belonging in the name of belongings in a society that uses thong-pins and S&M sms's dresses up as people when all it is is a beast with a dollar sign for an eye – It's truly all about the I – beholders or not we are sickening slippery beings and if there is a choice we made then we're consiously chosing condescension in the name of the superior breed of flesh of dress of mess of less than a poppy seed sprouting into the big H. that's how big of an ego eagle you are, I keep telling myself so as not to go bonkers in Yonkers so as to truly be – it's all about the I and the BE – worth the question the sms question the S&M question the unanswerable question of some whimpy kid BE – it's all about the bee, the flower and the tree – free and see and just claim the We and the teeny tiny Bee A tribe of so many devoured entities that we are that we admit ourselves to be keeps naming and taming the nature of Me keeps wining and dining in the bowels of mother-father earth – Please, help yourselves to a drilling of a hole in your mother-father's chest! pull them by the hair and never let them rest! – but truthfully I don't think my tribe wants my eyes to see that being a human is shameful to me. I pick up the phone and answer the kid I write down my name in reply and utter a slight imperceptible sigh as the poppy seed bursts and the answer is clear: in capital letters of my first and last name I type the weird words: "I don't think it's me." #220 Since you are gone, in the mornings I am listening to the birds for a long time. The flame, that has been illuminating your face, I have covered by the soil. I have disconnected myself and I will never be back. I should’ve cried, but I quit even before I have fell silent. And then, I left and you went home. I can take the responsibility of the executor. I know how to kill even further than knowing how to love. #211 Despite all the closeness, I don’t know you. I don’t know yet, with what writing you are writing down the secrets of the moon. I know you know about humming woods. I have seen you already, breathing in all the oxygen around yourself. I have seen you ages ago already, you are just a bit closer now. And I rather don’t use the questions, not to hurt the freedom, that tightens us, somehow into the simultaniousness, with no name. #206 Silently, I am undoing your buttons, my hands are shaky, you let me, not asking anything. The kisses belong to both of us. We ignite - the magnetism when we touch. We are inventing the words, the punctuations, the signposts in the fog; something that would explain the heartbeat. Something for us to grasp. We don’t even care for the wind and the blue blossom I gave you as a gift, because I don’t know the word for that feeling, it becomes transparent, as the air in the August, as the water being near by. #202 Even if you have forbid yourself, the tourkiz have already begun to live in you and it is glowing like a comet. The need of nourishment. I am eating out stardust and drawing the lines into horizon. #188 Magnetism between you and me would burn out our kiss as a comet in the clear sky The glimpse of the eternity. #183 At the highest peak, when the time is breaking down into the see and the gravity is chasing its origin; at the very beginning, everything is different. #181 The light in the darkness is brighten by the morning shadow. In the stove, the flame is burning out, slowly the answers are disappearing and the doubt-lined drought changes the way of the movement. And slowly, it is disappearing, what it belongs to the embers. #73 Her lips so close to me just blow me away. Sole escape velocity lunches me into the endless horizon. There is a hiding place of kisses We let them into the see. Let the gold of duality grows into the peace of the sight. #60 Today, it happened that I have, In her eyes, for the moment, (caught into the eternity) saw the universe. I could bearly breathe, this is how I am blown away by the depth. The most, she touches me very tender; as if she would be searching for vulnerability, to give it the value. When I feel her most closely, my sight is lost in the distance. As if my heart would yet have to come from the far, far… Jedrt Lapuh Maležič, short prose Težkomentalci (Heavy Mental) Translation: Barbara Skubic They Have Faces, Even Them I'm not allowed to make any calls and they won’t give me a phone, while my girlfriend keeps calling the headquarters to find out why they’re keeping me on straps. The generalissimo doesn’t speak with her, because lesbianism is a part of my psychosis, so much about that, and will pass when they up my dosage. Up my dosage. A sympathetic attendant comes to unstrap me and feed me the morning ration of meds, so that for the first time in a week, I’ll manage to show up at the morning rounds by myself. I so much do not care and I so much don’t give a rat’s ass about these people that I let myself be untied from the bed like the Crucified deposed from the cross, while she kindly washes my face with a damp cloth. “Don’t you think it’s been enough?” she says. Says to me?! That it’s been enough? Have I knocked myself to the ground all by myself and stuck needles into my ass night after night, day after day, have I butchered myself and tied myself down? I don’t say it out loud, because my tongue feels heavy like lead, I just look at her, like this, angry, so that the bint soon shuts her trap, because she doesn’t have a clue what it’s like to be on the wrong side of the veranda while the headquarters is in session and all you want is some fresh air and then a horde of half literates fall on you who can hardly wait to finally see some action in the silent lair of public administration. Shoo, gadflies. Nobody asked you to raise me, and even less to stick your spikes into foreign flesh. I can barely walk now and I can barely see ‘cause of the toxic fog, but for as long as there’s an insult on the tip of my tongue, you won’t get a good night’s sleep. They bring me, staggering, to the door of the nurses’ station beside which the door for the rounds is. Because I can barely stand, one look at the other patients makes me instantly change my mind and turn around, towards the attendant who’s pushing me forward lightly. She holds my upper arms, which she was protecting before from behind, just in case I’d need catching mid-fall, and gently encourages: “Just show yourself to the Mr and Mrs, you don’t have to say anything.” Then she produces a fleeting half-smile and says: “It might, in fact, be best if you don’t,” which makes me smile, as well. “I would particularly recommend you don’t howl like you did the last time,” she says and our eyes are laughing by now. I say out of spite: “Ready, steady, go,” and inhale deeply for a scream, but she’d already seen through me, that I’m meek, and because my eyes are stoned-smiling, she simply covers my mouth with the palm of her hand. She doesn’t touch me, she just marks the gesture, as if otherwise my chapped lips would leave a mark on her manicured hand. Then she says: “You’re really quite something, little miss,” and I don’t dwell on her lack of respect. I wouldn’t screw her over, like last time and the time before, by hollering at the top of my lungs that the doctor should finally let me go from this menagerie, I wouldn’t scream what they’re doing with me, I wouldn’t fuck with her to the point that she’d be forced to butcher me with injections, because this attendant is okay, really okay. It’s not her fault that she’s surrounded by loonies and sadists and in reality she doesn’t want to be here, she just doesn’t know it yet. I’m waiting, standing in the corridor, and hint at her that she can leave me alone, but she continues to stand behind me, protecting my upper arms from behind, like a contour or a hallo. Every now and then she moves her hand and the warmth on my skin moves along with her protection. In other circumstances she’d get on my nerves, but her hands are now like a pillow, I feel them even though they’re not touching me. Hospital rooms are locked, so that nobody can rest. Some people in the ward, who have for the most part changed during my ordeal, are loafing in the day lounge around the corner, including the fat goon Trudi who ended up without parents and so the good people of this institution protect her from the world, and at the same time probably use her as the guinea pig for that newest trend in meds, a syringe filed with seroquel, oh, so odious to me. I fall into the anger trap again, so I blot the thought of Trudi out before it gets to me – my social justice activism is not to be trusted, because my very appearance is, as I have only now become aware, completely untrustworthy. I fix my hair and with the eyes as clear as I can make them, I ask the nurse if I look as if I spent the last few weeks on straps. She laughs ad responds: “You’re not the first one. Don’t worry. Mr and Mrs Doctor know what to do with you.” She said it in a way as if the psychos were married, and after all, as far as I’m concerned, they might even be. Neither responds to my girlfriend’s calls, because they’ve collectively decided that a happy union with a woman is a strange symptom in my diagnosis. When I threw a fit last time in the surgery where they conduct rounds, the act that now seems wrapped in a mist, I did it because they, at my mention of the human I love most in the whole world, both sighed: “Ah, this lady friend of yours, of course,” rolled their eyes and exchanged meaningful glances, saying, what, is this psychosis still going on. I told them she was no lady friend, but they sighed even louder and cackled that she obviously couldn’t be anything else. That was when, as I remember now with crystal clarity, my fuse blew. My pressure rises when I remember their self-redeeming posture and the thoughts they stuffed in my head, and again I’d like to blow up their enthroned asses if it came to it. I can’t go to the rounds, it’ll be better that I remain on the corridor, amongst the patients, and perhaps go for a smoke with fat Trudi. I ask the nurse I might, just for today, skip a chance to dig through my psyche, but she shakes her head, smiling. “Everything will be fine, Amber, don’t you worry. You’ll just show your face.” I just showed my face and they immediately filled it up with puss, Mr and Mrs doctor. Their first question was the same as always: “Have you perhaps ...” I know exactly what follows and it gives me a little rush, so I interrupt them and complete them: “Have I perhaps heard voices? Oh, yeah, plenty of voices, don’t worry. They came from the television before the evening news and kept telling me the time!” Of course I was sarcastic as hell, very obviously furiously sarcastic, but Mr and Mrs first exchanged a victorious glance, then they started to study my file manically and filled it in with their vision of the world. After the glancing consultation they nodded to each other and the Mr – as very well becomes non-democratic environments – took initiative: “We believe that you could gradually attempt the open ward.” From straps to freedom? This was all it took? “After the injection, the nurse will accompany you to unit I5, to Dr Mrzlikar.” I know Dr Mrzlikar. Better yet, I know his patients. We used to share a balcony. They’ve died, every single one of them, yet they keep on lively running around. An auntie whose husband will no longer sleep with her and who tries to kill herself every week, a youthful fortune teller who used to be full of healing wisdom, but now sits in the corner like a heap of misfortune and puts on weight, a guy who can’t pull himself back together ever since they caught him hacking bank computers, and a super smart chess player whom they’ve enabled, with radical approaches, to walk a mountain trail and run a marathon, yet at the same time his mental capacities have dried up and he believes in his own disease and incapability, so he can’t produce a single college paper to set himself on his own feet, let alone finish studies and move out. I have to think this one through really well. Perhaps the offer to be moved to the open ward won’t come so soon again. But I’m already worse off as it is, so screw that, too. “I’ve nothing to do at Dr Mrzlikar’s,” I say emphatically and reinforce: “Thank you very much, but if that’s the case, I’d rather stay here with you wonderful people.” I think I manage a sarcastic smile, probably a crooked one, but still. Mr and Mrs are flabbergasted. She seems to me a tad more touched when she stares at me. I think her eyes welled up, but perhaps it’s just the light that seeps through the curtains and draws pearls into her irises. I decided that I would, during my first exist from the admissions ward, visit the missis in her office to present to her my side of the story. Perhaps she’s got some compassion left and she’d understand, after all it wasn’t she who had me butchered and she’s a mere observer, because Mr, following the hierarchical position, appropriates all the decision-making strings. “What is it that you actually want?” yells the Mrs angrily in that moment. Rather than asking, she’s reproaching me for not having accepted her goodness. It becomes clear to me that she had to fight hard for me. As if I’d practiced it a hundred times and without my tongue twisting a single time, I rattled: “I’d very much like to go back to unit I4 which I had left voluntarily. To Dr Gržinič in I4. I’ve unresolved issues waiting for me there.” The missis is indignant. “Such as?” It’s none of her business, so I use the sentence I’ve used to respond so many times before to the question if I were a lesbian by any chance, a response I was taught by a professor whom I asked one drunken night if she’d ever tasted human flesh. “What might be the purpose of such a private inquiry?” I ask and think that the professor must have eaten human flesh at some point. Mrs Doctor waves her hand as if she’d just gone insane, as if she needed to be pinched at such insolence from a drugged patient. I love it when the enthroned get flabbergasted. If they give you what they believe without doubt that you want, they expect you to jump like Roberto Benigni at the Oscars 1999 and kiss their foot. I doubt Roberto Benigni wasn’t aware of this and actually find his trick, whether it was meant to be a trick or not, an excellent mirror to the awards presenters from the American Academy. You wanted grovelling, here’s a dose ironically full of it, have it and keep it and may it remind you of what hypocritical bitches you actually are. And on the top of that, I really do have things to do in ward I4. I have to apologise to the nurse I’ve insulted in the moment of bad judgement. All I saw was her systemic face, and to me, she was at that moment merely a number in the periodic table of drug doses, so I snapped at her really nastily. She was the fence I couldn’t climb. I yelled that I couldn’t see a thing because her udder was constantly dangling in front of my nose. And also that she will, if she truly is the professional she appears to be, shrug her shoulders over my statement anyways and leave me alone. This is the unresolved business. This is karma that makes one dangle from the hated person on a single silver thread, so you can’t die in peace. “I have things to do in I4, that’s all you’re entitled to be interested in,” I tell Mr and Mrs who look at each other incredulously. “But there’s no room in ward I4,” says the Mrs. I insist, although from behind my neck an angel is yelling: “Watch out, John Wayne! From the back, watch out!” They were visibly insulted, which will most likely come back to bite me in the face. “You may go, we need to consult what to do with you,” they say and as I exit I have a feeling that I’ve screwed myself ever so slightly after all. I wander off to the day lounge and the veranda where we’re currently allowed to go. As I tread the micropaths along which they dragged me a couple of weeks ago, all hysterical and kicking and nettlesome, I truly feel that that wasn’t necessary, but I cannot agree with the dosage I received for my childish impertinence. It wasn’t madness, it was rebellion. I wasn’t manic, I was coldly determined to prove them my dignity – in that the border between the day lounge and the veranda is a fictitious one and that it only exists in their messed up heads. That I can step over it whenever I want to, because all this used to be a meadow once, a meadow with no owner, because all their therapeutic machinations at that time had no name whatsoever, and won’t have it in the future far ahead, because all this, all this that they see and we all see, will be overgrown by weed by then. I still paused for a second before I crossed the threshold to the veranda, because that was all I’d done then, weeks ago. They were having a meeting during the evening news, and I felt like having a ciggie. I set my foot on the veranda then, just like now, and I was not prepared to move it regardless of encouragement or order. This meadow, I told them, this meadow is not your property. They looked at each other, as if they’d cut the grass themselves and built the mastodontic complex of the psychiatric hospital. As if I were a person of colour stepping into their slave-owning civilisation. Their looks reminded me of all the grand inquisitors of the world and all the murderous generals, and the result is that I’m a quite a needle cushion right now and slightly annoyed when treading onto the precious piece of concrete that once indeed was a meadow, but no one could even guess that now. Fat Trudy skips past and says: “It is you, no way?!” Her singing accent places her somewhere towards the surrounding villages of Ptuj. “It’s not,” I smirk. It’s true, I’m not. This is definitely no longer me. This is me in my domesticated, broken version and this veranda is just as much a meadow as I am. I don’t bother to explain, because Trudi says: “You’ve a visitor. Some old guy couldn’t find ya, so I told ‘im I’d find ya sooner than him.” My darling papa, only marginally worried. He’s more angry at me. We’ve not seen each other for a long time. “I’m kinda weak,” I say. “Of course you’re weak, you keep on arguing all the time,” he rolls his eyes. And then very earnestly: “I’ve never thought you’d be such an asshole,” he says and my eyes well up. All this time when I was tied down I couldn’t cry. Where’s this fatherly warmth now? I’m just an asshole, what do I even expect. “You don’t know what these motherfuckers are doing to me!” I soon pull myself together. “Where were you when five of them lay on the top of me and pressed me into the ground with their knees, eh? Where the fuck were you?!” I snigger while his eyes are saying one thing and his mouth another. The mouth keeps repeating: “Don’t yell, come on. It’s not important anymore.” The more they repeat, the more I yell and the more the drops of sweat slide down my cheeks: “What they did to me! Fascist pigs, I could kill them! And they enjoyed it, too!” I howl and I sob, and while what his mouth says suddenly no longer reaches me – I only hear his eyes. They’re enormous and sad. When I hear his voice again, it’s less crass: “Can’t you see? How can I get it through to you that from where you are now, nothing can be achieved?! You’re not so stupid as to go fuck with them from the inside? Have you been dropped on the head?!” And something sticks. Mother of god, something sticks to me. I hear something. And I feel like someone has kicked me in the stomach and ripped my guts. I run from the waiting room back to the ward. I ask them to take me, even tie me and ban visitors, so that they don’t understand what the fuck is going on in the end. No matter how smart I take myself to be, I am in fact unbelievably assholish. I’d order and screw with and burn the system rather than my own hard head. Moments file in front of me when I resented my father for not taking care of me and lectured instead. Moments when my guts were being ripped open because I knew he might just be right. Quite pathetic that for years and decades I’ve been carrying millstone with me, one that could be used to destroy the invisible walls of this fucked up institution, or complete them, depending on the point of view! But no, I prefer to carry this stone in my arms and blame others, as if they were those who put it there and said: “Carry it.” And all that while cussing and panting and wheezing instead of simply putting the burden down. This doesn’t mean I have to cast it into someone else, just put it down. Stagger left a little, then right, if necessary, and then put it straight to the ground. This time I may have heard some sort of a voice. Straight to the ground, it was saying. Put down. Like this. Good girl. I curled up in an armchair in the day lounge and I had no use for anyone who was lounging out there. This is how I spent time until lunch, and I’d have stayed there even longer if fat Trudi, who has it a hundred times worse than I do, but doesn’t whine and feel sorry for herself, hadn’t called me. “Where are you, you beat up gal?” she said and pated my back. First I saw her worn out sandals on the floor. “Trudi, honey, what’s your shoe size?” I asked her and looked into her puffed up face. “Same as yours,” she jeered. “You have something for me?” I promised her I‘d bring her supershoes if I ever make it out to fresh air. “Listen,” says Trudi. “Eh?” say I. “It’s annoying. But you have a visitor.” I just shake my head. I’m done playing this game. “Tell them I was killed. That it was too much,” I tell her, then I roar with laughter, because I am truly pathetically spoiled. Of course I get up and stagger into the waiting room. There’s nobody there. Trudi, that little good-for-nothing, is making me look like an idiot, I think and return to the ward. When I pass the surgery, I think that it’s a little packed. I see someone who’s turning the back to the glass part of the wall, obscuring my nosy gaze. It’s a little unusual that they’re conferencing in the surgery, because usually they do it in the team room or some other space where patients cannot spy after them. Because Trudi’s nowhere to be seen, I nick a fag from the box she’d left in the smoking room next door and slide to the door of the surgery from the outside of which a lighter for patients is dangling, stuck on a string with a band aid. When I light up, the fag starts smouldering and I blow hard, just as the door of the ambulance open. I blow the smoke into a face of a nurse who’s not from around here. She’s my nurse from the ward upstairs, the nurse I’ve insulted, the nurse who was just subbing and never meant to harm anyone when I called her a cow a month ago. Because I’ve no clue what to say in situations like this, when you owe someone a double apology, I just say: “Oh,” and then I bugger off to the smoking room quickly because we’re not allowed to smoke in the corridor. Then I grab my head, because I’m sorry that I’ve not at least taken the opportunity to fix the karma, but the nurse has already left and most likely has nothing to come back for to this hellish admittance ward. The ward only has space for us, the epic pathetics carrying millstones around, and perhaps for those who were just passing by. And for Trudi, because they don’t exactly know where to stick her. In which file drawer. She blasts along as if she hadn’t just screwed me over, and all I say to her is: “I’ve nicked a fag of you.” In response, she winks at me: “Did you find her?” Who, when she knows very well that there’s nobody in the waiting room. “Don’t play with me, kiddo,” I tell her and laugh, convinced that we both know very well how I fell for it. “Nurse Tanja, dude, when I told U ya had a visitor waiting!” I’m so stupid it fucking hurts. Nurse Tanja came all this way to the ground floor for her apology, to visit me personally, and all I did was blow smoke to her face and said: “Oh.” Dumb as a doornail, fuck yeah. I fling the fag into a pot of water and run out of the smoking room, but in front of the surgery I get intercepted by none other than the generalissimo. His eyes spiral into me and he stretches out his arm so I cannot pass. Borders may very well be fictitious and all that, but I know full well that in that moment, he is my border. I cannot run over him after nurse Tanja, not even to the waiting room. “Amber...” he stops me mid-stride, maliciously, dryly. I’m afraid of his army and all the damage this can mean. “Yes?” I wait impatiently and for once avoid him in awe, but I do slow down tremendously. “Amber, you’re going to ward I4.” The decree has been spoken. I stare at him, amazed. The only thing I say to spiral eyes is: “When?” and they respond, “Right now. Please, follow nurse Tanja although I trust you still know the way.” I don’t know what exactly was going through my head as I was walking behind nurse Tanja upstairs to the promised land, but I do know that some like to call it treatment and others, gratitude. I’m not sure how effective it is with tools like myself, but supposedly sometimes, only sometimes, a sick head has a better judgment than a healthy one. It’s a good thing nurse Tanja was walking in front of me, because I’d have a real difficulty looking her into the eyes. Only when we reached the second floor I managed a quiet: “I apologize. I am truly so...” Before I finished, she drowned my voice. “I’ve already forgotten.” This is what she said instead of: “Shut up this second, because I haven’t forgotten yet.” I tried again, but she waved her hand and looked into my eyes. “I know it wasn’t you, you know what I’m saying?” Of course it was me, I thought, surprised. I was the one who cussed at her, not some sort of psychosis which might speak through me like a body snatcher. I’m not another person when I’m manic. I’m fully accountable for my actions. But in that moment, it was easier to grab myself by the heart as if I intended to rip it out and swear that I didn’t mean it that bad. Her eyes were still hurt, but filled with mirth. She hinted to me to follow her into the towel closet where she showed me a huge rubbish bag. “Your stuff,” she laughed. I didn’t remember anything. That I had any stuff with me? Strange, we, the time travellers, don’t haul clutter with us ... I was finding pieces of paper with slogans, journal scribbles, I was rummaging through the “rubbish” and finding notes, translations, sketches, drawings, memories of what I used to call profession, at times and with a certain dose of pathos even vocation. Too happy that my treasures didn’t go straight to the bin and I’d be able to revive my little grey cells, I squeaked to nurse Tanja: “So I’m not just a number after all!” She look at me earnestly, I’d soon think still indignantly, and finally slowly said: “Me neither, darling. Me neither.” Poems by Katarina Majerhold9/17/2019 Love - what is it?
We all want it, wish for it, wonder about it. We are ready to travel over the world to find it, sail over seas to see it, go to the meadows to smell it, to the clouds to touch it. But sometimes you go to the seaside, to dip yourself into the ocean like a tear drop, relaxed from the search of everything and then suddenly - you meet - her. - - - - - - - - - - - - There were no words to describe how lucky I felt to meet such a wonderful girl and my heart was racing and pounding at that thought and then do not know why I remembered a sentence from a wonderful poem Shake the Dust „do not let a moment go by that doesn't remind you that your heart beats 900 times a day and that there are enough gallons of blood to make you an ocean“. How wonderful was to dive in one's ocean to came out in another. - - - - - - - - - - - - - If I had just one wish What is it in your touch, what magic, poetry or dance? Your way of expression yourself, the most sincere, direct, continues flow of energy, of how you are without interruptions, evaluations, judgments and most loving, affectionate and honest attitude towards the others. What is it in your touch - most warm and powerful presence of yourself? I would like to see you dance, see me, us dancing together, see what magic our bodies would do to one another – I wonder, if bodies could speak in language what they would tell of us. And your voice soft spoken in combination with a big smile is a small wonder in itself worth experiencing it and living for even if you spread it among all. And it does not matter if we are in different times or spaces there are infinite possiblities of being together for me working with words is moving closer every second and making impact even if it is like a shooting-star you are not even aware of in the night sky. But now it is perhaps time to say farewell although I would gladly stay a little longer, keep feeling your touch and try something new like tasting your lips, and your soft like swan white skin and see your moving hips see joy in your wonderful blue eyes and hear beautiful sounds out of pleasure directed by my DJ tongue. Wish this beautiful girl with a magical touch, soft voice and a big smile, be my lover. Forgiveness Now I understand you much better then before - I always did to some degree - but I feel I need to fully forgive you in order to love fully, freely and trustfully again. Only by trying to understand your point of view (even if you did not ever bother to find out mine) I know and understand that our love story needed to end because it was not good any more to any of us I understand it is awful to be loved if that love is conditioned and how awful is that someone does not accept you the way you are but 'I love you only if'. So I forgive you but will keep away from you -------- I sometimes wonder why this person was so special to me why I could not not forget her for a long time even though I tried even though there were other attractive women coming my way. But then all of a sudden I realized there was no need to analyze I know what I felt in my heart was love. AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2022
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