Since you dare to follow yourself, you become a stranger in this world, but now you stand at the door to the secret.
The Wheel Change
I’m sitting on the side of the road.
The driver changes the wheel.
I don’t like where I’m coming from.
I don’t like being where I’m going to.
Why do I watch the wheel change
With impatience?
(Bertold Brecht)
1
… It is strange, but apparently it has to be like this. There is
a lot of strangeness in this world, a lot of unhappiness in this world. Unhappiness – not because there is a war or close friends are dying, or because there is a famine, a lack of all the simple things we need to survive. No, it´s a pain that gnaws at your chest, sometimes burning like fire, as if there was a hole where your heart is. And you don’t know the cause. Those clever people who understand so
much, who have an answer for everything, like, for example, sending the unhappy person to a psychologist or a psychiatrist or, as the next step, they feed them pills that promise happiness. You then take the pills, we know them as Mothers´ Little Helpers, which the Rolling Stones sang about decades ago. You then feel less of this pain in
your heart, less of that burning in your chest; but it’s not gone all together, you feel like being in a fog through which you hear people’s voices, they are happy, cheerful, there is music, the birdsong etc., or, perhaps more accurately, it’s like a fine smoke that isn’t acrid, but takes away the air you breathe … However, after a daily dose, life is no longer so easy to grasp: What comes at you, it hasn´t got any power, and you suddenly become a stranger to
yourself, you no longer feel your body, your arms and legs properly, you become lethargic. Your brain is like being wrapped in an absorbent cotton. What you eat, it feels stale; and yet, you want more of the stale stuff – – – and then suddenly, one night, you wake up, longing to go back to the burning in your heart, to that nothingness in your chest. Then you feel as if you’ve been cheated out of the pain, cheated out of a secret that this pain, which
cannot be grasped, wants to tell you about. – Everyone knows lovesickness. This pain is like that, it is not sorrow, but drama – and yet, this old longing rises up in you, and now it’s a longing for this burning pain, for the fire … At this moment, you flush these chemical pills into the nearest canal on the street, these goblins that wanted to force themselves on you, that confused all your seeing and hearing. You stretch your arms, your fist against the sky, you laugh liberated and you shout in a loud voice:
“Pain, come back into my chest, let me feel you, I have no more fear of you”, … and the goblins shout in squeaky voices: „You won’t be able to make it, you’re far too weak, fear is filling your head”… These old tormentors do everything they can to drag you back – you see the box of pills in front of you, you burn it and you send the ashes into the nearest canal in the street … and then something unexpected happens – like a flash, you feel it – – you become yourself again, raw, like a piece of raw wood … of course, the pain doesn’t take long to come, it announces itself as it were, you were expecting it after all. And it comes like happiness and has a new, unknown quality, it has a sweet taste, there is a certain joy in it, no, nothing superficial, it is different, deep and friendly, a smile
crosses your face. And a thought breaks through: Dull habit under the bell of stuffy fear, this is the life of the masses. I learned early enough that this could not be my life. I have come a long way through foreign lands, deserts, snow, inhospitable cities, violence, rebellion and defiance – is it all supposed to have been pointless? –
2
Almost always alone, without a wish, but not unhappy, I stroll through the streets of our city at night, through the parks, see the advertising posters that try to arouse envy and desire to be part of it, to awaken worries, according to the motto: if you don’t, then … Or they speak about the paradise: if only you … and suddenly you see the greed, the fear like clouds, like soundless truths that ring from these images. And you laugh silently to yourself. Fear to fear; no, that’s not my game anymore – maybe you’re unhappy, but free.
One night, it was around midnight, a warm, balmy summer wind carrying a distant music from somewhere to your ear, you stop, you listen to the music, you can clearly hear a clarinet, or is it a saxophone? … The old pain rings in your veins, but now mixed with a deep, happy joy. Your white shirt billows in the wind, yes, they are white, the news of this night. As you want to go on, you notice something
standing at the edge of the path in the park, a triangular stand, the announcement of an exibition with the title: The News From the Paradise Are Not Fake.
3
The news from the paradise is not fake. – And the night wanderer that you are, he freezes, it’s like a lightning bolt that goes through your whole being, through your chest, and your senses threaten to fade, your breath stops for a moment. This flash, what else could it be, illuminates a space within you, there is only light and light and nothing but light, right to the edge of your field of vision, but there is no edge, there is only space … and the night is dark. The sound of instruments from afar, it is a saxophone after all, a bright one, you decide, a sound from afar – news from paradise …
4
A return from exile – And I could not hold the light, nor the sound – – – but this night has called me back from abroad – to myself. Yes, it’s true, the news from paradise are not fake. Of course I looked at the pictures in this exhibition. The curator added a word to it in an attractively designed flyer:
Creativity is the mirror of intuition,
the harmony of the form proves it.
Interesting, appealing works, lots of gold, lots of light breaking out of various powerful darknesses. And some texts that some artists added to their pictures. I’ve made a few notes, you can read them if you feel like it:
Exile – Excoelis – from heaven
(A thought by the great „Celt“, Antoine Gadal)
* * * * *
The road was long and dark,
but then light came to meet me,
that said: Follow me.
And I followed and saw,
the light was my innermost being.
* * * * *
Friend, observer, it is no blind chance that has placed you in front of this picture. Linger.
Let your old self, the complicated one, melt away
in the joy, in the well-being of your soul.
* * * * *
There is paradise on earth, but only in your soul.
(Sartre)
* * * * *
Since you dare to follow yourself,
you become a stranger in this world,
but now you stand at the door to the secret.
Stay within yourself, in the house of your soul,
and the stranger will change,
as you learn to understand it, this stranger,
in the light of life
more and more.
* * * * *
Heaven has no place, nowhere, except in you.
* * * * *
The decisive question for man is:
Are you related to the infinite or not?
That is the criterion of life.
(C.G. Jung)
* * * * *
In the strangeness of your being:
It always takes two to argue;
For the peace and for the harbinger of paradise,
one is enough – one in the one.
* * * * *
In principio era il fulmine – in the beginning was lightning.
(Hans Hartung)
