Mein Haus, fernab des Lärms, auf Augenhöhe mit dem Horizont, flankiert von zwei hochgewachsenen Birken, liebevoll umzäunt, beherbergt einen Raum der Stille. Mein Heiligtum ist eingebettet in eine Aneinanderreihung mehrer Räume, die meinem Körper und meiner Seele ein Heim schenken. Fast fühle ich mich hier als Vogel, kann links wie rechts, Flügel gestreckt in den tragenden Wind mich fallen lassen und immer wieder in mein Nest zurückkehren. In feine Lebensäste gegliederte Wurzeln erzählen Geschichten, ihre Bäume nähren sich von Sonne und Erde, und geben im Verlaufe des Tages stets andere Dünste von sich. Ein dezentes Aroma , das ich gewiss nicht abstreifen möchte, leckt an mir. Ich rieche, ich sehe, ich höre. Des Öfteren frage ich mich, ob ich aus dem Fenster schaue oder ob die Natur durch das Fenster meiner Seele in mich hinein schaut.

Meine Fingerspitzen klopfen liebevoll gegen das Holz, beinahe um mich daran zu erinneren, dass wir wirklich sind. Sachte kraule ich mein Haus. In dieser Liebesgeschichte lauschen wir gemeinsam sich in den Schlaf wiegenden Birken, gewähren dem Mond mit unserer Anwesenheit ein Schattenspiel und zählen aus dem emporsteigenden Rauch auf des Schornsteins Erhebung glitzernde Sterne. Genau hier, auf diesem Grund stehe ich und atme.

Ich schmunzle im Einklang mit dem Universum als ich die Schwelle übertrete. Wir sind uns einig, dass es kein Hallo mehr braucht. Herz und Herz umgarnen sich. Worte erübrigen sich. Ich weiss dasselbe ist wahr in meinem mir geweihten Raum inmitten dieses Hauses. Es ist ein Raum, der in all diesen Jahren keinem einzigen, gesprochenen Wort horchte. Kein Gesetz hängt an diesen Wänden, kein Zwang, der zum wortlosen Dialog mit der Welt anhält, nichts mehr als das tiefe Sehnen sich der Stille hinzugeben. Wir könnten uns darüber unterhalten, welche zarten Worte der Verliebtheit jenem Raum vorenthalten wurden, welche Hass durchtränkten Worte keinen Empfänger fanden und welches zierliche Geflüster vergeblich einem Echo lauschte. Ich jedoch schliesse lediglich die Tür hinter mir und vergesse im selben Augenblick, dass es eine Sprache gibt; gesprochen, geschrieben, leer. Es ist nunmehr die Begegnung mit mir selbst – die Stille bin ich.

(Auch Du bist herzlich willkommen! Sobald weitere Herzen sich dazugesellen, keimt die blosse Freude an der Zusammenkunft. Die Stille selbst ist nicht getrennt , wächst nicht , wird nicht kleiner, lässt sich nicht locken oder zähmen, sondern ist; ist einfach, ist bedingungslos, ist alles. Und so, als wir uns in reiner Anwesenheit entgegentreten ist Raum nicht mehr, fällt Blick durch Blick und reisst mit sich jede menschliche Idee von Zeit. Keine Worte können uns hierhin folgen. Wir lösen uns auf und sind in Frieden nichts und niemand, und alles zugleich.)

Human. Sits. Eclipsed. Stares ahead into the starless, pitch-dark. Eyes wide, mesmerized, yet see nothing. A quiet sphere, lonesome too. Hears only the rattle of same multi-laned highway of circling thoughts, round and round like the digit eight. Infinity never felt more imprisoning. Feels pain; drawn across the asphalt, vulnerable, bare-skinned, gritting teeth. Hellos gone, happiness gone, affection drowned: a split course from other beating hearts. Witnesses long turned their backs. The shadows now masters. A heavy curtain: Sees nothing. Feels nothing. Hears no exterior. A stampede of foul cognition trampling every other seed. Isolation alongside buried attempts to break free. What is left but to bathe in misery?

Human. Experiences a morsel of premature death, dark; in a restricted headspace, in a burning, aching pain-body, in a broken heart. Or all of the above – strangely united – in a stygian medley.

Human. Cannot save another. Ever. Cannot lift his curtain. Every one has his own sword enslaved in a stone.

Human – cannot save another; no claim in these lines to turn away. Grab the hand that reaches out with all your might. Regardless, grow aware of your own veil and thereby discover compassion and gratitude and life as it rips through you, piercing, penetrating in all colors. You are the residency to radiance and light. Can you, for a moment, put down the lense and look directly at life? Can you in this frame of existence absorb the song that is crawling into the shell of your ear without layering thoughts over thoughts across the symphony? Will you allow yourself to be here completely, to immerse yourself into another, ancient connection with one more human, heart to heart?… and thus be one less who suffers.

Beyond a branch, the natural extension, reaching; growth out of mutilated arms gives rise to a new beginning. What mysterious existence lights up life around us?

I can hardly call it knowledge, for nothing was acquired or learned, I simply trust that you and I see the same wonders. I have no reason to doubt. Not your words, nor any other part of you, though truly it is your smile that exposes you. Why conceal awe, when resonated by your heart in the smallest crease around your lips, highlighting the passing admiration of your sensual intake?

I dismiss any hesitation. A rush of felt confidence, nourished by witnessing how you assume the same delight for these marvels and their magical helpers. Look, there’s one silently working, screwing a bulb into the life containing vein of a branch. And yet another, a laden bundle resting on his shoulders, trinkets of nature, little enclosed orbs, each encasing the colors of our world, in a single moment revealed to our senses without purpose. If anything, just to unfold a rarer, inner cause to ascend to full blossom of creation.

When every second we are open to the miracles surrounding us, and I mean open beyond classifying, naming or in any other way posessing, truly open, like unrestraining floodgates, mere bystanders, permitting the forceful cascades to pass, then we too emerge as the incessant, sublime currents of nature. You cannot restrain the cumulating resonance shining through you and I do not resist being affected by your glow. I can honestly say that yonder the untangled silliness of social constructs and emotional desire, I love seeing you entwined in wonder. I feel as though the moment unveils your true self, that pure essence of life, sometimes hidden in the obscure depths of the sea. I rest assured that Captain Nemo in the human created abyss of inflicted pain and suffering, deep inside his heart is enlivened by each new encounter, beheld through the wordless senses of a child, toying with the wings of mankind, a marble of gold nestling in his core and in yours alike.

A lost flip flop and with it the looming consequences. The cost, the squandered emotions: a tiny episode mirroring the struggle to let go. My constant conscious and unconscious efforts to perserve my-self by all means, wherein a financial loss becomes a threat, tugging at the corners of my existence. The mind convinced in forseeing the beginning of the end. So challenge the mind to let go of all financial securities, along with insurances, investments and technological aids. It is scary. How am I to survive in the face of insecurity? Better hold on tight to whatever, better not question the false-guarantees. Oh the attachment to the physical buoy, keeping me from sinking, from…? Why is it so terrifying? Could having nothing, or else, losing everything be liberating? I cringe at the thought. What will I cling on to, when there’s nothing left? Nothing. No holding on, or should I say, purely letting go; finally.

Maybe there is some relief I can’t or don’t want to admit to yet. Nonetheless it dawns on me that the difference is none, that holding on to illusion is like holding on to thin air. It’s a bird soaring high, soaring low, the wings gait transversing the naked haze, a transparent film reflecting light upon our receiving agents, coats of blue sky and green vegetation. I am that bird, thrusting wings into nothingness, trusting no one in particular to extend my flight. Dizziness overcomes me as I close my eyes and alas my mind. Like that one time in the sea, the water could take me and break me, apartness amplified in fear, then submitted to the cradling basin, soaking my heart, surrendering in spiritual awe. Maybe letting go means to open the doors to death and to meet its gaze, not in spite or grief, but in acceptance. See here, death is the cradle in the basin of life. And I shall bathe in it unclad.

This very second all of us are dying at various rates. Maybe we differ only by means of measure. What makes us appear separate might therefore be no more than the distinct struggles of staying alive, which we may or may not be exempt from.

The mind consulting the mind:

I was tempted to call you a freak of nature, but now I’m not so sure. The one contemplating you is the very same object of scrutiny. The divide is artifical, for I can take a step back and seemingly look at you from the outside, yet this phony metaplane only allows me to reflect upon my own from within. The mind recognizing itself, pretending to detach; one of the mind’s many tricks. So this is at most a little tango or a slow dance on the gym floor, in a hidden den, in the grandeur of a ballroom, where one seeks the other in close proximity.

You have been well trained over the past decades. Trained to always be attentive, to think it through, to think before you speak or act, to think twice. Socialization and education conditioned you to be able to predict, reflect, assess, take on the perspective of an other, learn from experience, inhibit action and surpress emotion. You have literally become a mastermind and as such paved the road to degrees, careers, riches and a place in society. Maybe you are a means to survival in this odd species‘ evolution.

You have built-in mechanisms that keep you from disconnecting, trickery to the extent of deceiving yourself. You feign to shut off, if necessary you urge the body to fall asleep, whereby you, I have discovered, merely change the channel and continue to broadcast in another dimension. I have figured you, or me, or whatever any of this folly is, out, and receive every new twist of your craftiness with a yawn.

Are you trying to outsmart yourself? Don’t be ridiculous. Fighting you is witless, nothing short of half-baked, attempting to cast aside one’s own shadow – come on! I can well imagine insanity being the outcome. Thus I came to wonder and learn, what you are so afraid of: part of me has argued that you are a primitive machine, programmed to execute the above, simultaneously fearing the unknown, fearing that you could perish into nothingness should you be quieted. In this habitual pattern, I suspect, lies a link to our breeds permanent, subconscious fear of death, thriving on terrifying fantasies about the unknown. Maybe it is you, that has been fooled all along in your own limited argumentation that the mysteries surrounding us must pose a threat.

I conjured time and time again strategies to still you, and was always met with the dilemma of the same chessplayer playing both sides. I cannot blame the babe for having delivered the secret. This I too understand.

Hush, my twiddling partner, it appears we are inseperable, as well as sometimes dull, often predictable and perfectly incapable of grasping anything of importance. This chatter has me gazing at the stars. Can’t we just enjoy the dance? Grant a loving embrace of insignificance, with a head-titled-smile, absentmindedly smudge the little pencil drawn circles of human acts, unsubstantial. Letting go is now a voiceless shuffle to the right, a choreography of hearts pumping in unison with orbits of laughter traced onto each others faces, whispers blown inside of balloons, ascending quickly, touching the sky from yonder – the world has become so small.

I has left the room, mind has put up its feet, the battle has ended. Freedom, the enlighted universe beams; never left. I shall now call it accepdance – surrender to silence. Nothing to loose in losing your mind. Now breathe.

Entertainment 24/7, pure and raw, disguised and disgusting, penetrating our minds a mile a second. A beast that we have unleashed and let in through the front door to rip us to pieces, shred our very existence, gnaw at what little life seemed relevant. Bystanders we have become, unaffected. The spices of our entities extracted by indifferent claws, recklessly unearthing the roots, grabbing the soul through the obscured mind like a wretch unplucking the suckling child from its feeding mother. A brute leveling the sea to mold every upswing of spirit and sparkle into the same unobstructed asphalt avenue. And still we remain impassive, just impatiently shifting from one leg to another.

(But then again, what in life isn’t a form of entertainment? So who am I to judge…)

On a cold summer day the rain clouds hang low, my head tugged away, chin up, the mingling drops softening the strained muscles around my face, labored from holding on too tight, too long. I wonder if the constant proceed of water flowing over me ultimately unites us.

The rain and I become solely one, undivided – a flurry of the past, hushed by fading memories. A sprinkle of dust on the befallen stories, no more than a drop gliding along a crease, a lonesome branch of life. A sudden shower, just another form we assume, transformation, and with no further ado promptly parting from latter days. Let us be soft and yielding, let us flow freely and feed the universal heart with affection. A torrent now, washing over each grain, once flower, once face, once a little lump of amorous play. Tales, just tales as we pound the world and drape it in sheets of sleat and snow. The resounding call of what might be bird, might be wing or feather against the storm. To let go into that same mesh of muscle and flesh, where without resistance we are always met. Soon no more than a drizzle, a mist fabricated by our mere existence. 

Have we become liquid sunshine now in our quest to be free? 

Gently rocking in my wooden chair out on the porch, unhurriedly swaying into the rotation’s black robes, folding like a veil over daylight; just so. Yes, just so – no intention, no agenda, no goal. And whilst I roll on the chair’s curved edges, while night surpasses day, and granting all forges ahead, somewhere in one of life’s countless little arenas the movements of the universe seem not to matter. 

Here perched on the top row, the still looker-on sets eyes and ears upon spectacles that can only be drawn by the trajectories of our trivial human existence, simultaneously carved into impermanent meaning: a boy and his BMX swaggering over the asphalt, popping a wheelie, turning and twisting, at its heel a stray dog like a loyal servant chasing shadows; there a kid, just a toddler, bouncing along, moving his body to yesterday’s rhythms, guided purely by that inner jitter our hearts and souls echo. Oh it spreads to yet one more, completely surrendering social apprehension, simply giving in to the urge to dance, all the while balancing a basket on her head. In that same production someone haphazardly kicks a ball, hitting another squarely across the face, whimpers, an apologetic fist bump, eyes lock, seconds hastily counted down, somewhere a game has found a new beginning, and a shirt and a bottle mimic two posts. 

What is the meaning of anything now?