Fred.

Dedicated to a friend who is a brother above all, a brother who has shared the emotions and experiences of a most fascinating and fulfilling month in this Life I have been given; a blessed journey through what Life truly is, and one that has taught me many-a-lesson and made me a slightly-more-whole human being. 

And Fred leaves. Never has a friend felt so much like a brother. Traversing the whole of Russia, Mongolia, and China together - the Gobi, Siberia, the communist capitals of the world; going through literal shit together, buses that never came, freak snowstorms, desert heat on horseback, trudging up and down sand dunes; poking fun at people, the neverending jokes and laughter (even when being stopped by the PLA in China); sticking it out in a ger together, putting up with a cat in the house (multiple times), late-night starscape photography in the middle of nowhere in the desert, exploring neverending Hutongs while making a million-and-one friends and enemies along the way; eating our way through the world, one country at a time; driving top down through a city come-to-life in spring, my dearest Berlin, zipping about tree-lined avenues just bursting with red, green, yellow, purple, with radiant blue skies overhead as the wind whips through our hair and caresses our faces; coasting down the autobahn, liberated from the world at 220 kilometers per sixty minutes, pure black asphalt opening up before us, the way the icy lake did as we coasted down hills on our not-so-little quad bike in our baggy pants; all this - this joy, this happiness, this overwhelming positivity and radiance of bliss and sunshine and life - was it really but a month? 

Never has a friend felt so much like a brother, one who feels so close to my parents that he can’t bear to call them “uncle” or “auntie” or “Mr./Mrs. Sohan”, and instead lies in limbo, for calling them “mom” and “dad” may not evoke reciprocal emotions and instead perhaps the opposite coupled with pure awkwardness. Emotions - what I feel now, sitting at my table, sipping the tea we just bought at the cafe made of coffee bean shells, in an empty and quiet home, so devoid of life, even as the cheerful sun fills the room with its golden light and the cool spring breeze scents these four walls. 

Strange bittersweet nostalgia seizes me as the birds chirp in the garden, where we had a barbeque what felt like yesterday; and I can’t be either happy or sad, joyous or depressed - I lie in limbo too, for memories are to be locked in the deepest recesses of the heart, to be savoured in those special moments when life seizes you with joyous nostalgia, and life is truly lived. These words I write capture but a fraction of what lies in my mind. To choose the pen or the sword is an inane query, for as the world spins around and around and day turns to night, it is only we, who sit so small and alone beneath the vast canvas of the starry night in the steppes and plains in that gentle valley of simple joy - it is we who feel and we who smile quietly at the beauty of recollection, of memory. 

In memory of this beautiful month, 1 April - 1 May, 2015. 

PASSAGE - through time and through nowhere

 7 January 2015, on an old train in the middle of nowhere, for today, 'nowhere' finds itself in the Polish countryside

Oh how tremendously life has changed in the past few weeks. 

I think back fondly: Saturday mornings spent wandering the streets of Chinatown, witnessing night turning into day in clubs encircling the Bay that selfsame evening, gazing down upon the glittering city from a multiplicity of glittering skyscrapers; Sundays in glitzy shopping malls, or out in the sunshine and warmth of that cheerful island. Weekdays spent in camp (really, it wasn't so bad): the brick-red parade square and the gleaming silver flagpoles, the less-than-luxurious bunks and the rusty little gym. The smiles of friends, the less than stellar food - the shared suffering. The warm familiarity of it all, of that life. 

But today I find myself in a carriage on an old, perhaps Soviet train, being whisked through golden fields and snowy forests, as countless little Polish villages, scarred by unendingly harsh winters and a painful history, flash past the grimy windows. I press up to the glass, my breath fogging up the icy pane, watching landscapes of green, gold, and white melt into one another. 

At this moment, the snow drives down hard; sheets of ice slide rapidly down the windowpane. The next, an expanse of gold, dotted with now almost-bare trees, as dogs romp about against a backdrop of grazing horses, while the rare villager rides past on his creaking bicycle, baskets filled to the brim, for winter has arrived and shall remain. All this time, I sit pensively, a witness, as the train whistles sound, piercing the still silence of the landscape. It is something almost out of an old black and white feature. Flocks of frightened birds are sent up into the air as panting cars sit at ramshackle crossings, waiting for their turn to pass. 

I catch a glimpse of a copse of white birches; a split-second later, they're gone. Warsaw is approaching fast. I hide myself warmly in my many layers of wool and cotton. My scarf tenderly hugs my shivering neck. Gemütlichkeit. I step out onto the platform, and so the next adventure begins. 

new year.

10.45 am
31 December, 2014 

a thought, written on an U-Bahn train while passing Hohenzollernplatz

What's the big deal about the New Year, anyway? This insignificant planet completes another tedious revolution around a burning yellow sphere, and we, in our dingy holes underground, atop our structures barely a fraction of the height of the great mountains, in our minuscule dwellings and trifling lives - we flash lights and blare music that we alone hear. We alone. Alcohol, our toxic creation, consumes our self-important being; we dance, we sing, we sleep.

And with the best resolutions which fade one day later, another sunrise begins, another revolution about the same burning ball, on the same tiny planet. And so on. Etc.

Oh, so I guess it would be customary to say it now. Happy New Year, guys.