I S O L A T I O N A N N A

Wow, it's been T H I R T Y days since I began my self-isolation due to the coronavirus wreaking havoc across the lands. I am actually okay with this. I spend a lot of time at home, anyway. I make music in my room and pilates on the floor and banana bread in the kitchen. I sit by the window to catch the sun and go for runs at night when nobody is around. I also decided to make a playlist with all my favorite songs. It turned out to be quite an ambitious project. You can follow it on Spotify. I will keep adding new songs as the quarantine goes on.

N O T M Y B A B Y

the nite is like a fading radio

the lake was frozen over long ago

3 2 Y E A R S L A T E R

live your life on a merry-go-round
who starts a fire just to let it go out?

cdf riesengebirge

IN YOUR ARMS

HOW WOULD I KNOW THAT THIS COULD BE MY FATE

                                     

Nobody ever lives forever

so you give it one more try

To wave goodbye, wave goodbye

†

TOO CLOSE TO THE WAVES.

MOOD.

THE DEATH OF 2016

2016 - Pretty shitty for a lot of reasons. Bernie Sanders is not going to be the leader of the free world, and I lost David Bowie and Carrie Fisher, they were practically family. War and injustice have continued to ruin peoples’ lives on earth, whilst animals are still disrespected, poached, tested on. I won’t go into details, but let’s face it, the world is still a very inhumane place, and there are too many assholes roaming through every single country. But there are also good people, and there are many reasons to believe that there are more good people than bad people. And those continued to fight for the rights of humans, animals and our planet in 2016, and in some cases, they have even succeeded. I just hope more of that will happen in 2017 - people coming together across the planet to fight against corruption, injustice, stupidity, hate, and all that jazz. People have the power! 

For me, this year has taught me a lot about myself and who I am. I have continued to struggle with chronic illness, but have also been able to overcome some anxiety associated with my physical ailments. I have come closer to accepting my flaws and past mistakes, I have learned how to forgive and show no resentment to anyone or anything. I completely freed myself from seeking emotional dependence on other people and have learned to appreciate past slip-ups for what they are - learning experiences. Sometimes, you have to make the same mistake three or four times to realize you can do better - and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. 

2017? I hope to reconnect with people who I don’t contact enough, cherish the friendships I made this year, spend more time with my family and pets… I will try to engage in a more thoughtful, environmentally aware and sustainable lifestyle, work out, stay fit, eat healthy, breathe, and look forward. In less than two months, I’ll be 30, and perhaps this is the first year where I finally feel like an adult. You know, one of those people who have stuff figured out.

Tonight I will stay on my couch - it’s a first. I bought some fizzy wine, I will drink it out of the only Martini glass I own, then light some candles, watch more Tom Hanks movies, and cuddle the cats. I hope everyone out there with pets will keep them safe tonight, New Years Eve can be traumatizing for our furry friends. I wish everyone the strength and enthusiasm one needs to survive 2017, or maybe even make the best of it. Stay safe and beautiful. 

CHANGE OF PLANS

After enduring Shannen Doherty hair for a few months, I went back to Winona Ryder hair. She had it all figured out. If only I could go back in time and have Winona Ryder hair throughout all of my life and until eternity. I look into the mirror and ask myself, why? Why did it have to take 28 years for me to understand my hair. Now I know what they want. Now all there is to do is move on and live with the hopes that I will never go back to any other hair. God willing.

SHANNEN DOHERTY HAIR

Only goal for 2015: Get Shannen Doherty hair.
Edit 2016: You are still beautiful. Stay strong.

TIME // IS // JUST // A // THING

I have lived here for a year now. University started this Monday and it is already messy, everything, really. The cat meows all the time, but when I put on "The Smiths" it sits calmly on that purple couch, eyes closed, listening, purring mildly. Summer is fading, it was a short one, so short that I almost didn't get to wear all my summer dresses at least once. I have learned new things, about myself and the world, gladly appreciated to discover a city I have never visited before, and managed to fall in love more deeply than ever. All in all, a summer worthwhile. So autumn can come, and I won't be longing no more for that roof terrace of yours. Autumn may come, and I won't miss how your eyes would grin against the sun, squinting on the very hot days in July. I especially enjoyed those days by the lake. Biking for a bit too long, we have found that secret path; on day two they cut down the reed by the shore and we had a clear view. You swam across a few times, while I was wondering about the future, filling out cross word puzzles or reading about the war, and planes approaching the nearby entry lane. I think of this summer as this intangible thing, because it was so short, it almost seems as if it never happened. Now that you are gone, I sometimes wonder if I made you up. How come you are at the other end of this world now, while I am still here? How come my memory is full with all this intangible beauty, whilst time is already counting down for our reunion? I will be here when you return. I sleep in your sweater sometimes. You left a bunch of those, that's good. Sweaters and shirts. Things that remind me of you are of abundance here: Vanilla scented candles, those sandalwood incense you hated, your blue toothbrush lying by the sink (it reminds me, I didn't make you up, you chewed quite a lot on it), the rose you gave me when we last met, it's dried out now, placed on the shelf you put up one night, next to the stove; there's still the smell of you everywhere I go, it's haunting me, perhaps. Biking by your house each day, sometimes passing that bar where I first saw you during a late November night; realising that the person who took over your room likes to keep the blinds shut, but the lantern in front of your window will always burn at night. And the crane by the corner, that building they were setting up, it's sky high now, blocking all the views; oh so glad we made of the roof terrace the best we could while you were still here. And the birds are gone now. They will return about the same time as you. I will be here.

TWENTY FOURTEEN CAME SOONER THAN LATER. IS IT MAY ALREADY? I DON'T KNOW IF I AM EMOTIONALLY READY.

   To share my life with the rest of the world has always been satisfying, almost a necessity, I would say. My memory is working in quite arbitrary ways, and what I end up remembering seldom turns out to be worthwhile. Writing helps, of course, and I would be lying if I say that my journals at home aren't part of my open bookshelf, at your disposal, if you feel like coming over. The last time I wrote about taking chances, and I took quite a few since then. I ended up in a new city and continued studying, met a hundred few new people and made a myriad of staggering friends, got an apartment and a black Spanish cat, an almost functioning bicycle, and on top of it all managed to find a shampoo that makes my hair more shiny. It's really not that bad.

   The Hague is an ambiguous place. You turn into a cobble stone road and see tiny brick houses with dark blue, crooked window frames, you look inside and want to take part in what seems to be sole contentment, transpiring behind the glass. People know how to live well in these parts of the world. The Plein and Grote Markt are filled with untroubled minds, and drinking in the early afternoon sun has become a less unorthodox phenomenon. You stroll around a corner and the cobble stones keep leading the way, more Ikea-colored drapes and unwilted flowers gracing serene window sills (I am thinking that I haven't seen anything blossoming inside my home ever since I moved in), and then you realize: everything that's missing in your life can be found behind that glass. You turn a corner and another one, and here you are, surrounded by government constructions and less entrancing livelihood. The big white town hall structures, the unforgiving reality of the Turfmarkt being everything but "turf", the city center that is desperately drowning in modernity. The Hague is an international city, it has the responsibility to be representative and to appease to the outside as this really competent place. In the meantime, I moved into a small one-bedroom apartment close to a gracht, and a 5 minute bike ride from campus. Pink walls, a necessity, flower patterns, candles, golden mirrors, long white curtains covering those bay windows, and, of course, cat toys scattered all over the living room floor. I've made it quite cozy, but I am missing a stable income and a book shelf. For now, things are working. Almost 10 months it has been, and I can hardly believe that the time has been running by so quickly. I wish there was a way to share all of what happened in those 10 months in one blog post. But it is impossible, and I can only pretend to try. Being creative when extremely happy is difficult for someone like me. So I have been too happy, perhaps. And it rains a lot in the Netherlands. A lot.

*    *    * 

*    *    *

SALT WATER // #HOWDOWEKNOW

Sometimes, you meet someone and realize, that they are the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. You meet them when you are sixteen, nineteen, twenty-two, twenty-five, you meet them when you are twenty-six. You probably will meet them when you are thirty, or thirty-two. But every time you think, that this is it. And every time it is better, and more intense, and more happy. Until it ends. And it always ends. As humans, we take a while to realize, that it always ends, because time is just a thing. But, you can learn from pain, it's an effective way of learning. It helps us to compress and conceive our emotions in times of heartbreak.

When I was younger, my heartbreak usually resulted from me obsessing over finding true love based on the wrong things. Life is that way. You are thrown into holes over and over, you crawl out over and over, covered in regret and defeat, deprived of your dignity. But what can you do, other than start over and move on? The alternatives will leave you with nothing. So there you are, moving on… and moving on. It becomes such a natural process, and they say it gets easier with time. And they may be right. But I say, young love is important. Because we get a sense for idealism that only young love can formulate. And it fosters creativity like nothing else. It is, in my eyes, the onliest and most crucial experience that will determine how we will love for the rest of our lives.

At age 16, I felt for the first time, in my heart, the necessity of losing against life. On the hottest day in July, early morning, the person I loved stepped on a train, threw his backpack into the cabin, turned around and said "I am sorry. I just don't love you." I didn't run after the train. I didn't watch it disappear in the distance, to dwell on the fact that something I wanted so badly was getting further and further away from me. Instead, I sat down on the ground, until dark, and tried to figure out how I could ever move on from this. The void I entered was to become a part of my adult life. I should many times feel what I felt that day, and every single time it should become ever more demanding.

Ten years later, I am enduring a different kind of heartbreak, one that turns out to be the greatest challenge love ever presented me. Unsure if this will be the start, or the end of something, I go to bed shivering over uncertainty, then wake up shivering over uncertainty. When you meet someone, who you are compatible with to the extent where they are strong when you lose focus, and where you're strong when they lose faith, isn't that how it's supposed to be? That feeling, where the love from the other manifests in a way that nothing makes more sense than for them to stay in your life forever.

Falling in love makes more sense than most things. It makes you laugh when you want to cry and cry when you want to laugh. Holding the other person and be safe, knowing you've finally found that arm to lie in, for the very rest of time. But soon you won't be able to hold the other person anymore, won't feel safe anymore, and the heartbreak becomes as real as the beauty, brought into being by two lonesome hearts. Reality is a toxic place for an idealist. The incapability to inhale, and that pressure on your chest -you know the deal - it becomes an everyday endeavor.

And then the day comes, that day where they will board a plane and fly across that loathsome body of saltwater. The ocean, again, shattering things like no other (I do prefer the Mediterranean or Baltic Sea, smaller water masses, they're less likely to turn against you). This is a recurring theme in my life, and perhaps I should become involved with time travel again. Time travel is essential in times of heartbreak, and we all know it. Let’s save that for another day.

The truth is, you merely move on. And you wonder if this, too, will pass, this heartbreak, and if it will take with it the beauty that was so apparent once, so essential. Because the beauty, that is so deeply inscribed in our memory, that made all this heartbreak somehow bearable, in the end, is what keeps us believing that it was worth it. It is what makes us fall in love again, knowing that heartbreak will follow sooner or later. 

But the beauty I felt wont fade, not this time. The bitterness, the kind that usually comes with heartbreak, is nonexistent.  And that’s when you smile, and when you know: There will be beauty, always. And it helps so much, to recognize, that the older we get, and the more we have to withstand, we can still feel so strongly about something, that has the potential to perhaps, in one short moment, take everything from us. But we have to take our chances. I am taking this one. 

Life is that way.

CIMITERO ACATTOLICO OF ROME

I visited this place with great expectations. Buried here are, amongst many other interesting people, John Keats and Percy Shelley, two of my very favorite Romantic poets and Englishmen. I think, that when I walked into the gates of the Protestant Cemetery, I already felt something strange, a slight breeze, my softly trembling heartbeat leading the way. I wrote a love letter to Keats and decided to bury it near his tomb stone, unable to be found by a stranger or caretaker, knowing that in another world he would be able to read it and affectionately reply. My good friend who walked with me through the grass and understood that we needed to rest on the bench across from Keats' grave for a good while, told me that I am 'seriously mad' (in a thick British accent, of course). We walked by the graves of Antonio Gramsci and August von Goethe, wondering what it would take for somebody to decide to bury us here, after we'd died. I knew I had more to explore, more to live and more to create before I could ever think about death the way Keats did when he was my age. I wondered what it would take for me to become known and appreciated, loved and welcomed the way I dreamed to be. My friend didn't take any pictures, he also didn't write any love letters. Why did I do this? Where does my motivation come from? More questions need to be answered. I still collect lip balm for a hobby.

There was no other place in Rome that made me feel this content and made me question my motivations at the same time, yet I knew that I couldn't return. Not before HE would have replied to my letter. But when the time will come, I will know. Somehow.

WANDERING THROUGH EUROPE // PART 1

I am a cliché, but that's okay.

The past weeks I spent in and around Rome and traveling through Tuscany. It wasn't a conscious decision I made, going to Rome, but perhaps the lifelong dream of one day having a villa near the Mediterranean Sea, writing endless songs about it, planning to build tree houses by the river and watching To Rome With Love or Roman Holiday played their respective parts. The moment I set foot on the train that took me from Fiumicino Airport to Termini station I started smiling, and I guess I didn't stop until the plane lifted off the runway weeks later. During my first night, I walked up the Spanish Steps at midnight and made my way up to the Pincio, where I gazed over the city, purple skies behind the pines of Rome and the happiest tears making their way down my cheeks. Breathing in, tasting my own tears. I've come for a reason, I've come to discover beauty and peace, to become more balanced and find romance in solitude. 

I was in love with this city. I made it.

    

      Beauty is like remembrance, cast

        From Time long past.

                                                                  - P.B. Shelley 

It took a few days to figure out where I was, to realize that I had changed my habitat, that this was something completely new and undiscovered. I kept thinking about all the things that had happened in the past few months. I had finished a bunch of years in New York. I had moved away from Amsterdam. I made new memories, remember? I felt like writing and figured that inspiration would be something not hard to find in a city like Rome. What I didn't foresee, was the impact that this inspiration would have on me.  

During my first week, friends of mine invited me to visit the city of Tivoli. It was a place that presented itself in strange ambivalence, yet once I started taking in the pretty things around me, I fell into a deep, irrelevant hole of nothingness. How did I get here? Gazing off the balconies of the Villa D'Este, I realized that I would no longer talk to people, neither would I share my impressions and instead walk behind my friends, so I could stop, ponder and take in more of the things that we passed. So many balconies, so many views. But why? Why do people come here? I wondered. My friends knew the history of the place, they read all the brochures and discussed the love life of Lucrezia Borgia during our train ride. I had to look out the train window, into the quaint mountains. They were clear and mighty up close, but intangible and blurry afar, blending in with the sky, softly. I felt like climbing one of them, to get to the top, to be blurry and soft and to blend in with heaven, to feel like heaven. 

Then I started to realize: I could only take in beauty, if I got rid of all abiding ill-emotions beforehand. Simple concept, hard to put into practice. Was I really this disconnected from myself? C., poised and calm, walked through the villa gardens with no worry, seemed at peace and content. I wanted what he had. In a hidden corner of the garden, we found an arched hole, with view over the Roman Campagna, and that's when I had my moment, perhaps. It was romantic because life does that to you, it gives you chances, it gives you stuff to work with. There they were again, the mountains all blurry, and I started to feel empty no more. "This is beautiful!" I said. C. nodded, then ran to chase some of the stray cats through the garden.

I stood there for a while. Once that I had captured all the beauty, I immediately figured out a way to compress it and also how to filter out the best parts to keep. What a system, I thought. How come this never came to my mind before? -- The train ride home was full of energy. I had started to process this day in a way I never experienced anything before in my entire life. There was regret, for a moment; perhaps I had lived my life the wrong way until now. Never had I just sat there, really just sat there, and closed my eyes to listen to the sounds of a waterfall in the afternoon sun. 

We made amazing memories. 

 

(All photos taken in Tivoli, Italy)

MAKING THINGS HAPPEN

Watching SHADOWS on a friday night. Lelia and Tony running through Central Park, arm in arm; I envy them and remember how well I fit under yours. These things happen. It made me smile, it gave meaning to this evening. I guess I had to capture it:

NEW MEMORIES // I DON'T KNOW WHY

Two stories, together and apart; working it both ways.


Pt. I

From the juvenile, coffee-tinted pages of the past & present; today he plays another part, back then he was a soldier. Never forget why you are young only for a certain amount of time. These days are always remembered. But sometimes you purposefully forget things. Because you've been burned. J. says that she is a teenager in her late twenties, I think perhaps I am just a pensioner with freshly colored red hair. So then I go and rummage through these pages I just told you about, and I find treasures and feelings that I've kept hidden for the longest time. I purposefully forgot. I decided it was time to face the demons. So I met the people who could help me remember.
Here I walk through the city alone and careful, there I slip, because my new boots are not made for all the ice on Berlin streets. A week full of new memories. I meet you. We just lie around and talk about the past. We just lie around and feel the comfort in knowing one another. We just lie around and know that these are the better days. We just lie around and have no regrets. Even after eight long years. Then alone on the streets again. My friends have grown up too. It didn't seem possible, but it's happening to everybody. I helped them remember too. I did. And we made new memories, my old friends and me. And then there are also new memories with new friends. There is not much to remember. But they must have been young once too. I wonder how they managed ten years ago, when I was just setting foot into the big city. Hello. I am a teenager and I want to belong. Do I belong now that I am 26? And maybe J. is right, and I am a teenager in my late twenties, still. Life is this cycle in which we keep acquiring memories, just so we can suppress them again afterwards. And then, years down the road, when we have made enough new memories and have forgotten all the old ones, purposefully, because of all the pain they caused, we meet with them again and remember that the fire that scarred us, when we were young, was a friend and helper.

Pt. II

I like your touch, I like it, but I don't know why. I like to grab your hand while it's in your pocket, and hold on to it when walking with you and I don't know why. We pass by places we've been before and I remember, but you don't and I don't know why. We go my way and not yours, because I know the way much better, and you kiss me in the snow, and I don't know why. I tell you my story and my secrets and about all the things I like and you are listening and I don't know why. I feel like you understand but then again I feel like you don't, and I don't know why. When we sit next to each other, I feel moths blindly and wildly roaming through my belly. There is no space for butterflies, and I don't know why. Your hair is soft and I don't know why. I wish I didn't know your name, and I don't know why. I want to disappear under the sheets and I don't know why. A five minute walk is no coincidence and most certainly not fate. I don't know why. You have a lot of secrets, and I don't know why. I started to listen to music again, and I don't know why, but likely it's because of you.

// TO LEARN FROM HAL HARTLEY

Life lessons to be learned from Hal Hartley's film 'TRUST' (1990), which is being re-released right now. 

The world needs to see this. Because Hal is a genius and nobody does it better.

LITTLE GIRL LOST, LITTLE GIRL FOUND

Sometimes, when jetlagged, lying in bed at 5 am on a sunday morning, reading William Blake under the blankets, cause that's what I do, I start to wonder about how to make songs out of all his poems...

 In the Age of Gold, 
 Free from winter's cold, 
 Youth and maiden bright 
 To the holy light, 
 Naked in the sunny beams delight. 

 Once a youthful pair, 
 Filled with softest care, 
 Met in the garden bright 
 Where the holy light 
 Had just removed the curtains of the night. 

 Tired with kisses sweet, 
 They agree to meet 
 When the silent sleep 
 Waves over heaven's deep, 
 And the weary tired wanderers weep."

(A Little Girl Lost) 

It's a song, indeed.

Back home, back where I started my journey a very long time ago, eight or nine years ago, I try to remember certain days where I made decisions that eventually changed my life. A very long time ago, for some strange reason, I walked into this book store and bought a book, and for probably the same reason, I am reading it right now.

Oh, this green little book, I've been carrying it around with me for 7 years, wherever I would go. I bought it at a tiny book store in Greenwich in London when I was 19. London was my home then. I didn't dare to touch the book. It stayed in my brown leather bag for a good while. From there it went with me to Berlin. The first time I opened the book, I ended up reading it in one whole session. I do prefer to read in the bathtub. It's a safe place. I poured some red wine and opened the first page. I was smoking rolled cigarettes while the water got cold, added some hot drops, had my foot open the faucet, ash kept landing on my shoulder. I was all wrinkly after. The world was circling above me - T. had installed an old globe we found at the flea market as our bathroom lamp on the ceiling. It didn't give much light to the room, so I had put up tea lights on the edges of the tub. I never wanted to leave this place. The book is wrinkly now too. It moved with me from Berlin to New York in 2009. It was the only book I brought. It was there for me when I endured loneliness, homelessness, heartbreak... It was there when I tried to come up with lyrics, but couldn't. It was there when I needed a friend.

I do feel like I need a friend. The little girl lost, she is still creeping under the sheets. But I remember she was found, too. London is on the opposite page. Maybe this is a sign. Perhaps I need to return. Perhaps I need to return the book. Maybe I will take a walk to Primrose Hill on a Monday morning in May, and will read my favorite poem while watching over the city, then accidentally leave the book in the grass. And whoever finds it will have a similar journey. Maybe I will meet this person, and they will tell me their story. I want to hear more stories. People don't tell enough stories anymore. They meet to talk about trivialities. The don't look each other in the eyes anymore. They don't take the time to feel a stare, to catch a story this way. I love stories more than anything. Tell me your story. How did you get here?

And throughout all Eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me.

26 // CHANGES // LOST // FOUND?

26. It happened. And it is probably the most radical change that I have ever felt in my entire life. I can feel it everywhere and it's in constant movement. I look in the mirror and I see a grown woman, who's just now realizing who she really is. This is a woman who struggled for years with her own identity, with her own demons. There are a few. They are still there, but they don't bother her much anymore.

Her is me. I guess if I talk about myself in third person that would show some signs of detachment from my own personality. And maybe I am feeling detached from everything right now, I feel this emptiness that I haven't felt in a whole year. 25 was a strange birthday. One year ago, I met the most wonderful person. He was everything I ever looked for and we knew that we were supposed to be together and be there for each other. It was a sign, it was something that needed to happen. I was in a bad place and he took me to a better place. I found love again, I found real love and understanding for the first time in my life. It all made sense. And then a year goes by and I look back and I'm detached, and I realize: This was the best chance I've ever had, this was the greatest opportunity to make things right, to work on myself and become somebody who could love somebody right... this was as close as I would ever get to true love. And I got pretty damn close. But there were too many obstacles, too many things to overcome. When you are young and in love, these things can hurt you and make things fall apart. Or what if you really don't know the other person as well as you thought you did? What if they had it coming? And I watched him fall down and didn't do anything, because I wasn't aware. I was in denial, I thought I could fix him. I couldn't. Nobody could fix anyone, ever. You can only fix yourself.

The love is still there. All of it. And for all I know, it won't go away for a very long time. But the trust is gone. The sadness is so strong and the disappointment and anger are two things that keep hurting me with every second that goes by. I get him now. I get his fears now and I am angry at myself for not having understood earlier, for having been in denial. I want to hold his head and tell him it will be alright. That he deserves all of me and that he will have all of me, but that he needs to be happy first, and that he will find happiness if he truly believes in himself and that he deserves all of this.

I always thought he was the stronger one. But he wasn't. He carried my sadness on his shoulders for too long and it became him. And I was selfish. And now is he. For all I know, he truly believes he needs to do this, and the decision, as cowardly as it is, might make him the man I truly want.

There are so many profound thoughts, so many tears. They all say they don't matter. But these tears will always matter. I have always given my everything for love, and I wont stop now. I am stronger than I think. And so are you. Don't forget... YOLO, bitch.