The Dog Days Are Over

farewell

2011-09-13T19:45:00.000+02:00

So, this is the final goodbye to this blog. Please please please check out my new one here.

one last time

2011-09-12T16:28:00.000+02:00

I guess this is the goodbye to this blog. I haven't been too happy about posting here for quite a while, but only now it feels like I really want to start something new. I'm dragging all of my past with me at the moment, and it felt as if I'd never grow older here. Hard to explain, actually.I haven't found a new blogging-home yet, though I really love being on tumblr. You can check mine out here.

Farewell to all of you, and I hope to see you soon somewhere else! (I'll post my new address here soon.)

I write like

2011-09-10T17:19:00.001+02:00

I write like
Chuck Palahniuk

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

Peter Handke

Took these tests today, once in German and once in English, and these are the results. Am not sure if I am happy or not. What do you think?

Find a map

2011-09-08T21:30:00.000+02:00

I'm scared today.

Don't you understand? The world is scrumbling beneath my feet.

Changed

2011-09-07T00:15:00.000+02:00

There is something inside of me that has changed. I can feel it.

Things I used to be: scared sarcastic selfish sad. Slytherin. I used to plot every day of my life, every minute of it. I was mean to others. I hurt people's feelings even though they won't admit it. I only cared about myself. I only thought about myself. I was a self-centered, sniveling whatever.

Things I have become: Hufflepuff and House Stark. Nicer (I hope). I do stuff for people, like seminar papers. Without charging. I don't think so much anymore, things just happen to me and I have no control. I can accept it. I help.

I really hope this change is true, and it is not only something I want myself to see. Because when I see myself now, I am proud (not of my looks, but what's beyond). Sorry for this post.

Half of my heart

2011-09-07T00:07:00.000+02:00

There is something that I have to say that I haven't in a long time. And I am not sure if I knew it before, but it just really hit me. These words there at the start of the post, I can relate to them. I do understand missing someone.

But on the other hand, there is something different. A part of my heart feels cold and lifeless, ever since someone stamped on it with both feet. When it stopped hurting, I never went back again, I never put myself into that part anymore. It is nice not to feel pain so much. It is nice not to feel helpless in relationships anymore. It is nice not to care sometimes.

Because this is what I feel. I love, with my whole being, but I will never again be hurt like I have been. A part of me will never care again.

And I am not sure if that is good.

Images here and here.

A Human Heart

2011-08-12T10:21:00.000+02:00

“I’ve always agreed with William Faulkner—he said that the human heart in conflict with itself is the only thing worth writing about. I’ve always taken that as my guiding principle, and the rest is just set dressing. I mean, you can have a dragon, you can have a science fiction story set on a distant planet with aliens and starships, you can have a western about a gunslinger, or a mystery novel about a private eye, or even literary fiction—and ultimately you’re still writing about the human heart in conflict with itself.”

- George R.R. Martin [x]

Letting go of the past

2011-07-17T18:52:00.000+02:00

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
-- Albus Dumbledore

(Oh fuck you Dumbledore for being so right all the time.)

I wish it were that easy.

Shameless

2011-07-16T17:04:00.000+02:00

I could say that I care about something, anything else right now, but I really don't.

Images via starshide; the screen cap is from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

I am still speaking

2011-07-08T16:42:00.000+02:00

I wrote posts like this one before, but I never published them or deleted them right away. Today, it's different.

Today was no better and no worse than any other day of the week, except for that you hung up the phone while I was still speaking. I wonder if we could ever last a week without something being wrong.
It's not my fault if you mess up my plans, something goes wrong and I have to cancel you. Don't you believe for one minute that I wouldn't have rather spent the time with you. But, behaving like you did, I guess it was for the best anyway.
How nice of you to treat me like shit even though I did nothing, I repeat, nothing wrong.

I hate that this has become a mailbox for my relationship, and I am sorry for it. I'll try writing about something else soon.

Thank you

2011-06-25T13:53:00.000+02:00

Yet to come

2011-06-24T23:31:00.000+02:00

I came home today and found my father in a quite sad mood. He's usually more the moody kind of guy, so there are only very few occasions I can remember where he was actually downhearted like this.

As we talked and I told him everything about Dublin, we came closer and closer to what was actually bothering him. He's the project head of a pretty big science exhibition thing and is pretty much pressed for time, so that was one thing, and he actually said that he was scared it wouldn't work out. Honestly, that was the first little shock this evening. (Scared. Frightened. Afraid. These are such alarming words coming out of the mouth of one of my parents. If they feel so, it makes me think immediately that something must be really wrong.)

Then he started talking about the upcoming addition to our house. I never understood why he wanted to change something - I love our home. (It has a beautiful garden, it's mostly wooden and the rooms have this special feeling of... home.) But today, he revealed it for the first time. We came to speak about the financial crisis, and he said that he had saved a little amount of money for, as he said, "just in case". (That was the second thing, although I can't really explain it. Maybe this way: I am so used to security and safety that I don't think in the categories my parents might think: Of the possibility that we might one day lose everything we own or are forced to leave our home. It scares me.) However, due to that financial crisis, he said he's afraid he might lose his savings and thus decided to invest it in our home rather than in a car or something else. For the first time, I feel as if this crisis is actually there for us, for me. It always seemed so far away and somewhere in the future, but it actually isn't. It's right here.

I know I usually don't do posts like this, but this conversation really affected me deeply and I am kind of emotional now.

Irland #3 and some pretty heavy stuff

2011-06-22T21:02:00.000+02:00

We went to Malahide today, which is a small town north of Dublin. The secret is that I have been there once before, on a summer exchange two years ago (2009).

I was 15 then, and in Malahide, a lot of firsts happened to me: First summer without my parents, first flight alone, first nights out, first kisses (with more than one guy, I am ashamed to say), first heartbreak and first boyfriend. For the following years, this summer has been the best for me in my memories, a magical time, so to say.

When I returned today, I visited all the places: the fountain where all of us sat every night, the summer school, the coast line, the park and the Starbucks where I had my very first date. I stood there and closed my eyes and waited for something, like a feeling of recognition or a flash of memory. I sat at the table where I shared a vanilla latte with my first (now ex-) boyfriend. But, surprise, there was nothing. Nothing but the thought that the place was awfully sad and the space in my heart where I had kept everything was awfully empty.

Because the truth is: Yes, this was a wonderful summer, and I grew so much then. When I returned to Germany, I felt as if I wasn't the same person anymore, but someone new, someone that I liked much better. But now, this summer has been over for two years, and all I can think about was how happy I was then and how unhappy with myself I am now.

So many things turned out so great. My friends at home turned out to be the best I could ever wish for; school is going well and I have a new boyfriend who is more a gift to me than anything else. Everything seems really, really good. Everything but me.

I won't deny that I am not happy with who I am now. I have been struggling with my identity for some time now. Wow, "identity" is such a big word. But this is not a problem I can solve by just acknowledging it (which I didn't for quite some time). With so many good things in my life, I've been feeling like I am fading. "I" as in "as a person".

I don't know how to put it right. I am not who I want to be. I hate the way I look and dress myself. I feel as if I am vanishing in the crowd. It's not that I want to draw attention to myself, I just don't want to feel that grey and invisible. I want to look in the mirror and see a person, a personality, to some degree, there, instead of a thousand things I hate. As mundane as it sounds, I want a different hair colour. I want to dress more individually and not as if I am trying to look like someone else, but fail horribly.

The second thing is something I don't have a real name for. Maybe you could call it "label". I have been trying to fit in, just like everyone else. There's nothing wrong about it, to a certain degree. But I have grown to fear other people's judgement so much that I switch between roles and personalities so fast I have no real idea who I actually am. I have never developped something I could call "myself". I don't know what my true interests and tastes are, I just change them whenever I am with somebody different. It's a horrible habit and it is keeping me from ever feeling like a autonomous person.

Sometimes, I like a certain role so much I try to stick with it, but it doesn't last for long. For example, I have another "dark phase" or whatever you want to call it, start dressing all black and smoking again and feel like shit. It works for me for a while, but then I am somewhere in town, using a bathroom in, let's say, McDonald's and see some girls standing in front of the mirror doing their makeup. Of course, all of them are way prettier than I am, dress gracefully and so on. I will find myself feeling horrible and ugly and change my appearance the next day.

I know that's an ordinary problem that so many people face, but I honestly don't want to care anymore. I want to find "the" look to keep without always feeling like an ugly monster. You would thing that with so many reassurances in my life, I would finally find the strength and courage to put my feet down and start being myself. There's nothing to be afraid of anymore. I can be whoever I want, however I want, and I know the people close to me will still be there.

The question is, WHO DO I WANT TO BE?

My first reaction: I don't know. But deep down, I have this vision of myself I'd like to fulfill. When my social consciousness slowly awakened, the first thing I noticed was that people (the popular ones) called me a nerd. Not to my face, but I could see it when they saw the mark on my tests and hear it when they were talking behind my back. And insecure and unconfident as I was, I was not brave enough yet to refuse. I changed, at least as much as I could. And now, I just want to go back and become what I would have.

So no to self-doubts and no to caring about strangers' and haters' judgement. Yes to change.

I didn't check this for grammar or spelling. Sorry for any mistakes.

Ireland #2

2011-06-21T20:39:00.000+02:00

I know and feel that if I am to write anything fine and noble in the future I shall do so only by listening at the doors of your heart.
I would like to go through life side by side with you, telling you more and more until we grew to be one being together until the hour should come for us to die.

(James Joyce to his wife.)

We visited the James Joyce centre in Dublin today, which is as perfect as I could a museum for a writer ever wish to be. If you are ever here, you should visit it immediately. I haven't read any of his works yet (it's shameful to admit), but I bought a copy of Ulysses which I am planning to start reading as soon as I have the time to do so (translate: as soon as I have finished watching the second season of Glee).

I could not describe Dublin in any words that I know. I hope to find soon.

Ireland #1

2011-06-19T22:48:00.000+02:00

Dublin is amazing. There are sirens and alarms and people swearing all the time right under our window, and it always rains when we don't have an umbrella with us, and we always get lost when we look for something (like we couldn't find the Dublin Castle and ended up at a Christ Church Cathedral) and we already spent too much money, and the hostel room is dirty and the bed is way too small for the two of us, and there's only one blanket, and slowly but slowly we keep on running out of Glee episodes to watch, but - it is wonderful here, and part of me never wants to leave. (I mean, the castles here look like Hogwarts!)

But another part does, and in my sleep, I travel miles and miles, over hills and the ocean, it goes on and on and then it arrives wherever you are now, and when I awake I know that's where I want to be.

Obsession

2011-06-11T14:40:00.002+02:00

You can check out my fanmixes here @ my tumblr.

Friends and food

2011-05-31T16:49:00.001+02:00

(I'm not even supposed to be here. Instead, I really should start writing the exposé for my seminar paper on 1984 that's due tomorrow or tidy up my room... oh wait, I can't even find my copy of the book... too bad)

But maybe exactly because it's such a stressful and busy time (and I know I probably shouldn't say that after hanging out at my boyfriend's place for three hours and not doing anything), these two pictures are just perfect as motivation for the future. This is exactly the way I'd like to spend my evenings: friends and good food and lights.

Accio

2011-05-26T20:23:00.000+02:00

(source: TheBird-TheBee)

Speaking of Horcruxes - Accio would come in handy right now.

On thinking about will-be

2011-05-25T18:32:00.000+02:00

You ask if I think about our future?

Of course I do. I do everyday. I wake up in the morning, and the first thing I think about is you. I go and brush my teeth and put my clothes on and wonder if you'll like what I wear and, gazing at the mirror, if I look the same to you, because so much has changed, and sometimes I'm afraid you'll see me in a different way.

At school, of course, all I see is you. I see you in class and in the hallway, in the schoolyard and when I look out of the mirror. All I think about is if you are somewhere around, if I'll see you conincidentally.

I think about what we'll be in two minutes, in a few days and in ten years. I picture us in out first flat, travelling and watching television together. I dream of being there for you for the rest of my life. Of course I do.

But you know what? No matter how much I dream, nothing amazes and delights me as much as reality. Because what really happens is more complex and more beautiful than my dreams. It exceeds everything I could ever think of.

I will be your Jane Eyre.

2011-05-25T18:21:00.001+02:00

"And you will stay with me?"

"Certainly - unless you object. I will be your neighbour, your nurse, your housekeeper. I find you lonely: I will be your companion - to read to you, to walk with you, to sit with you, to wait on you, to be your eyes and hands to you. Cease to look so melancholy, my dear master; you shall not be left desolate, so long as I live."

Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre

Breathing

2011-05-17T20:29:00.000+02:00

This is a text I have written a while ago, but I revised it today. The first sentence is the main idea, the words that came to my mind at once, and everything else came after that. Honestly, I had no idea where it would go. (And I have to admit, it didn't go very far, did it?)

Everyday it feels as if I breathe in and you breathe out. We are a system, like a person is a system that works, and we work only this way (or we are used to work like this, there's never been anything else): I begin, breathe in and break the first ground; but only you decide if, when and how you breathe out. I can only begin, never end.

I look into the mirror and see us. I say something and watch you.

You don't look into the mirror. You turn around and look at me directly. Yes, you say to something I have said and breathe out.

I look back into the mirror and it occurs to me what you said to me when we first met: "I wish, I could wake you up." And as you said it, you waggled your fingers in front of my face.

But I am so tired.

We live in these breaths, and every single one of them, you end. One should think that, when I gasp for air because you didn't breathe, you should do the same. But you have an oxygen bottle, you don't need our air.

We work like this, we always have. The truth is, I don't mind doing what you want, seeing the films you want to see, go to the restaurant you picked and buy the cereals you like; but it's my breath that hangs itself at it.

I don't say anything this time when you say you want to go to this and that movie on Saturday. The next day, I ask you again. You know this game. Everybody does.

My grandmother told me on the telephone that she wanted to go to Helsinki for a couple of days alone, and her life partner keeps on asking about it due to indignation against it, when where and how long. She really seemed to be annoyed about it, and everything I could say was "Yes, I know that" and laugh - and I really did know it, just the other way around.

So we go to the movies at the weekend, and I look at us, later, in the mirror, and ask myself if one day, we'll begin to change like the portrait of Dorian Gray. We don't, of course, not this way.

But I am so tired.

No, it didn't happen that way. We go to the movies, and at some point, I lean over to you and say: "You wanted to go here, but I don't." And, to my surprise, you stand up and leave, and the cinema is so old and small, that your shadow is magnified on the screen, and instead of following you, I stay and watch the movie and don't watch it at the same time.

We are so used to work like this, never in another way. When I come home in the evening, you're there, and you say: "I'm so tired."

I look into the mirror and see us. I see, how you breathe, in in in. I wish you would look into the mirror, too, and breathe out.

I have a few questions.

2011-05-15T21:04:00.000+02:00

Just to let the record show, this is the stuff I am forced to deal with.

Why do people read novels? Or, what is the use of it?
Why do people not read other people's diaries? And why would I not want anyone to read my diary?

I can get the first question. Although I love literature more than anything, I can understand to a certain degree that not all people feel that way. The second one, however, I have no answer for. I can just say that I hate it.

Sufjan Stevens

2011-05-09T22:11:00.000+02:00

Thinking about making a blog project with all my favorite singers and bands. Anyway, among them there would be (a thousand times!) Sufjan Stevens. I've wanted to write a post about him for so long, and I love so many of his songs I couldn't decide, but now alea iacta est and it's "Vito's Ordination Song". Tomorrow, I'll want to post another one (and maybe I will), but that song has been on my mind for days. Especially the last two lines.

And when you write a poem,
I know the words, I know the sounds.
Before you write it down.
When you wear your clothes,
I wear them too, I wear your shoes.
And the jacket too.
I always knew you.
In your mother's arms,
I have called you son.
I've made amends between father and son.
Or if you haven't one:
Rest in my arms. Sleep in my bed.
There's a design to what I did and said.

Object

2011-05-09T15:50:00.000+02:00

There was a book flea market in the library where I work yesterday, and I couldn't resist purchasing a huge pile of new books (well, actually, they were given to me as a present, but anyway...). Among them was Homo Faber, a, as I have heard, wonderful book by Swiss author Max Frisch. I haven't read anything he's written yet (which is a sin according to my mother), but heard a lot about him due to having read Herzzeit, a book that contains the letters Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan exchanged and also a few letters written by and to Max Frisch.

And because I have been thinking about the question myself a lot, here is a video of him talking (in German) about the object of literature.

Willow Trees

2011-05-05T22:33:00.002+02:00

I want to scare you with the closeness and fidelity that I don't think I always show enough. Because I do have these thoughts; I've just learned to hide them.

I know I scared you with that dream I had, about you and, like a strange mirror, the disfigured version of you that kept changing throughout the whole dream, remember? I really thought I'd scared you then. But this is a different kind of scaring, I guess.

I know you want to plan your future, and even though I don't know what it holds, there are patterns of ideas and hopes that I have sometimes - I see myself all alone, writing, I see myself in a room crowded with people I don't know, but the most comfortable and reassuring version of the future is the one with you.

Once we solve the problem that I'm typing too loud, we could work in the same room, at least sometimes. We could have a flat or a house surrounded by trees and grass, with big windows on the roof so we could always see the sky. There would be a room for all your stuff, one for mine, and one for the both of us. We'll have friends staying over, parties like Gatsby's, and days hanging out under the porch while the rain is pouring down.

Imagine how we'd pick out wallpapers and furniture for the rooms, how we'd arrange all the little things on the shelves and walls. How we'd squabble with one another about the pillows and blankets. About the "tech stuff" and my Harry Potter collections. How there wouldn't be enough space for all my books. How we wouldn't need heating because all your computers and stuff deliver enough heat. Imagine us in a supermarket, purchasing groceries. Cooking Chinese food.

We'll go skiing again (I promise), and spend a summer somewhere near the sea where you can hear the rustling and mewing of the seagulls. We'll go and see all of our relatives. We'll go to birthdays and funerals together. I have this idea of getting older with you.

There was one thing I was always so sure about: I never wanted to marry, out of principle. I never saw a sense in it, and still don't really (except for certain tax advantages), but the idea of exchanging vows has been growing on me, in a way. In a soft spot in my head, I have it all planned out already:

It would be outside, near some willow trees, just like in the song, and it would be late summer, and the sun would be about to go down, but not yet, and it would be all in vintage style. I don't think of dresses or rings or honey moons or names, even (how strange it would sound). I just think of that moment, and that song. Can you feel the soft light rays of the sun on your skin? Can you see yourself, holding your hand over your eyes so you can see me? Can you see the trees? Can you smell the grass and that feeling of late summer?

And just like this, I have every other possibility planned out in my head, too. Everything that is possible happens, Juli Zeh writes. And in my head, it already has.

Lucky

2011-05-04T22:17:00.000+02:00

Lucky me I have you to make me feel like shit.

Unforgivable; a prologue

2011-05-02T22:02:00.000+02:00

I wrote this as the prologue for my only multi-chapter fanfic in English (I wrote most of them in German), and it might as well be posted here than just hang around on my computer. The title of the fanfic used to be the same as the protagonist's name, but now I changed it to "Unforgivable".

I always tell people I grew up believing that I was a completely normal girl – except for the occasional blowing-up-things-and-similar, of course, but that, I claimed, never seemed suspicious to me. The truth is that since my third year of age, my parents have visited thirteen different psychologists with me, whose inquisitions they wanted to extract what was wrong with me. Surprise! – they couldn't tell them either, and because I became an increasingly serious problem and they wanted to reject the responsibility for my and others' safety, they thought of an alternative plan, and thus henceforth I went to a boarding school somewhere in the countryside, I think it's not even drawn on a map, at least I wouldn't know which dump I'd have to look for. The whole affair was then happily resolved when we found out that I was a witch, which they suddenly found absolutely terrific and let me move in again, well, at least until the first school year began and I went on my first journey to Hogwarts; that was about for a month. I don't need to talk about Hogwarts, everybody knows about that anyway. It's possible that it had more importance to me since I had spent the past years in a malodorous boarding school with cross-barred (I know I'm exaggerating) windows that were polluted by flies, but that's minor, anyway, I was as gobsmacked as everyone else as we sat in the boats and sailed toward Hogwarts, and like some of the others I knew that Hogwarts was the home I had never had. And it turned out exactly that way; the Speaking Hat told me a lot of things I didn't understand, but at least I was sorted into Gryffindor, which didn't matter to me all that much at the time, but unfortunately you could hear all the squealing about how incredible magic was and that they'd never expected to come here, all the time... If I had only known.

For three years I emulated everyone else's deeds – I attended classes, I observed the extraordinary proceedings in Hogwarts with dread and amusement, hung out in front of the Forbidden Corridor a bit too long with my girlfriends in the first year, took part in the trade of talismans against the Heir of Slytherin and sent a love letter to Gilderoy Lockhart in the second year and in the third year, I lay on the ground of the Great Hall with all the other pupils and wondered if Sirius Black was still in the castle and if Furunculus would be enough to defeat him in a duel. In the fourth year, everything was a bit different.

There are two things that you should not! know about me. First, I have used one of the Unforgivable Curses. And second, somebody knows about it.

The End

2011-05-02T15:23:00.000+02:00

So going to die on July 15th.

In your eyes, I'd like to stay.

2011-04-27T21:13:00.000+02:00

I must admit that I am not a fan of her in general, but when this song was performed at the Echo Awards in Berlin two years ago, it completely made me fall for it. (Not to mention the level on which I could identify with it.)

In the mourning

2011-04-18T18:28:00.000+02:00

You escape like a runaway train
off the tracks and down again
my hearts beating like a steam boat tugging
all your burdens on my shoulders

in the mourning i'll rise
in the mourning i'll let you die
in the mourning. all my worry.

now there's nothing but time that's wasted
and words that have no backbone
oh the whole world
seems to be waiting
can you hear the echoes fading

in the mourning i'll rise
in the mourning i'll let you die
in the mourning. all my sorry's.

I'd like to get on a train and drive to nowhere. Just feeling that the speed brings distance between where I'd be and where I am now would be enough to lift a weight heaviert than myself off of me.

Supposed to

2011-04-17T21:59:00.000+02:00

I wonder what I am supposed to do -

give you a pep-talk and sound like some stupid smiling vaccuum salesman
tell you I love you and know it doesn't really matter and I shouldn't make myself center of this
try to encourage you with shy, shy words
or say the truth: I have no idea what to do and mostly I have no idea what it's like I know, but what am I supposed to say?!

Tonight

2011-04-11T19:26:00.000+02:00

You are the breath to my life.

Untouched

2011-03-30T21:17:00.001+02:00

I'm sitting in a mess of things right now, books and paper sheets and cameras and clothes and empty bottles and plates with residues of food and yes, it is a bit disgusting, but I don't feel as if I could persuade myself to get up and clean. Things have been good, or well, I can't deny it, maybe because I don't have the time to think about everything so much (because there are a few things to worry about, not affecting me directly, but some really close friends of mine - or some friends who at least used to be really close).

I've been reading Oscar Wilde and Kazuo Ishiguro and Shakespeare's sonnets (when away from home) and Harry Potter IV (when at home, curled up in my bed with a huge bar of chocolate). I cannot name it, but things have been so slow, in a way, so manageable... it's comfortable. And that's all I could say, really.

(Except for one thing, maybe: I feel like the picture very much, as if the world has been living on me, as if people have been talking to me, and telling me things I can't handle, and trying to get to me, whereas I have remained still and untouched.)

Cloudiness of today

2011-03-23T21:14:00.001+01:00

I'm beginning to see through the cloudiness of today. Sometimes, I'm getting this glimpse of what is actually possible, if I don't let myself be talked out of it. I feel so optimistic, suddenly, as if I knew that I will get through.

Maybe it was because today I've been thinking about what I would change about my life, and it's surprisingly little. I'd like to have a little more time for myself, mostly. And I really want a new haircut.

There are many things I would do differently now than I did at the time, but all of these things lead to me being here, thinking this. And maybe, not today, but someday, I will accept every single experience as something that has made me the person I am.

I'd like to take a backpack with books and my mp3-player and get on a train and go far, far away. It does not matter where.

Image via The Land Between Here and the Mountains.

Wish You Were Here.

2011-03-06T15:49:00.000+01:00

Damn, damn damn, what I'd do to have you here.

Homesick, though I'm home.

2011-03-05T23:44:00.000+01:00

It's been less than a day, but there's already this empty space inside of my heart, and it grows. This is a little playlist. I miss you. Please be back soon.

Foo Fighters: Still
Feist: Still True
The Beatles: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
Kings of Convenience: Homesick
José González: Heartbeats
Beirut: Mount Wroclai (Idle Days)
The xx: Night Time
The Cure: Underneath the Stars (Renholder Remix)

Image via with my head in the clouds.

Winter Winds

2011-03-03T22:40:00.000+01:00

You make me feel whole, and at the same time you take away a piece, and another.

I've been sick for a few days, and going back to reality felt like waking up from a long, calm dream. I've been writing and unconsciously hiding messages in the texts that you will hopefully never read. I could be so happy, and though I really know I am... I feel lost. Maybe just right now.

Winter is taking another breath to stay, but at least the sun comes out (occasionally). During the holidays next week I plan on curling up in my bed and read all of the Harry Potter books again.

Image via Föralskelse.

In Two

2011-03-01T19:43:00.001+01:00

The truth is - I sometimes hate the way we're so different that you just don't understand me (not knowledge, nothing explicable, just what I feel). I'd have to spell it out for you into senselessness, and I just don't, and that's how we remain apart.

Uncensored

2011-02-28T19:53:00.000+01:00

I had a dream of burning all of my diaries and notebooks, of setting them on fire and watching them fall apart. I put the ashes in a small round box and forgot all about it. Instead of them, I had a new book full of blank pages, and I would write down every thought I ever had in there, completely uncensored. (Because lately, I've been feeling as if I've been censoring myself and my thoughts not only in real life, but also in every other form of self-expression. It scares me a bit.)

Have you read Jonathan Safran Foer's books? (Did you like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close as much as I did? Are you jealous of people that talented and gifted, too, deep down?)

Apprehending blueness, or stars

2011-02-09T19:00:00.000+01:00

Not easy to state the change you made.
If I'm alive now, then I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,
Staying put according to habit.
You didn't just toe me an inch, no -
Nor leave me to set my small bald ey
Skyward again, without hope, of course,
Of apprehending blueness, or stars.

Sylvia Plath: Love Letter.

Image via hellanne.

Fruits

2011-01-30T20:01:00.001+01:00

I cannot wait for summer.

Images via you are the moon.

How I want to live

2011-01-30T11:31:00.001+01:00

This collection of images by Old Chum just blew my mind because it sums up exactly the way I want to live. (Reading The Grass Harp by Truman Capote, I am a little dreamy about living in a cottage in the middle of a forest, or even on a tree house.)

Hyperballad

2011-01-29T11:08:00.000+01:00

I've woken up hours ago; you haven't. I let you sleep and started to tidy up my room, watch a TV series and have breakfast. I gave up and just sat here, waiting for you to wake up, so we can start the day. It reminds me very much of Björk's song "Hyperballad":

We live on a mountain
Right at the top
There's a beautiful view
From the top of the mountain
Every morning I walk towards the edge
And throw little things off
Like car parts, bottles and cutlery
Or whatever I find lying around

It's become a habit
A way
To start the day

I go through all this
Before you wake up
So I can feel happier
To be safe up here with you

It's early morning
No one is awake
I'm back at my cliff
Still throwing things off
I listen to the sounds they make
On their way down
I follow with my eyes 'til they crash
Imagine what my body would sound like
Slamming against those rocks

When it lands
Will my eyes
Be closed or open?

I go through all this
Before you wake up
So I can feel happier
To be safe up here with you

Image via Föralskelse.

These Weeks

2011-01-24T22:15:00.001+01:00

I used to think that I hate these few weeks before a relationship either starts or just doesn't, these weeks when you pass each other in the corridors and blush and look away, look back and run over another person accidentally (based on a true story).

These weeks when you sit in front of your computer for hours, just waiting for the sound that announces a new message has arrived and when you refresh your mailbox every few seconds.

I used to think that I hated curling up in a ball and crying my eyes out because I thought that all my hopes were vain. I used to think I hated crying all the time.

I really thought I didn't like the tension that sent electric shocks up my spine and into my heart every time there was just the possibility I would see you. I thought I didn't like the heart attacks your glimpses were giving me.

And now, weeks later, I think about these weeks when I made playlists and wrote poems for you and got into all that drama because I was analyzing every word you said and thought it would never happen anyway, and I'd like to feel like that all over again.

Sorry for a total self-absorbed, cliché post. I can't help it right now.

The mind has already forgotten what the body still misses

2011-01-24T20:02:00.002+01:00

I've been thinking about the coherences between body and heart, or soul, or whatever. How much of what we feel is actually us rather than some biochemical reaction in our bodies? Is love nothing more than a fast-beating heart, or is it something in our brains?
A thought:

"People always say it's harder to heal a wounded heart than a wounded body. Bullshit. It's exactly the opposite—a wounded body takes much longer to heal. A wounded heart is nothing but ashes of memories. But the body is everything. The body is blood and veins and cells and nerves. A wounded body is when, after leaving a man you’ve lived with for three years, you curl up on your side of the bed as if there’s still somebody beside you. That is a wounded body: a body that feels connected to someone who is no longer there."

Guo Xiaolu, Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth

The title is a line from Regina Spektor's song "Uh-merica". Image via Föralskelse.

To Tear and Tears

2011-01-06T21:06:00.000+01:00

It feels as if my complete being is a wound, and you're the cure that tears everything further open.

Warm

2010-12-24T10:51:00.002+01:00

So this is Christmas, and as I am looking back on last year, it's amazing just how different I feel. The past year has been a treasure, especially the past weeks. It doesn't happen often that people enter your life and change it this way and spread closeness and warmth. But that's what happened for me. I feel like someone entirely different, someone entirely new.

I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and, because I can already foresee I won't be posting anything soon, a Happy New Year.

Click on images for links.

Faceless

2010-12-09T18:29:00.000+01:00

These days, I sometimes feel faceless, right until I see myself staring back in the mirror: wide eyes, messy hair, and an unconscious smile. It's a face, but it's not mine.

I'm as happy as I've not been in ages, and guess why. The only thing that keeps bugging me is the fear that it could all just fall apart any moment. But believe me, I'm prepared.

Picture via ...etc.

I like to hear but not to listen, I like to say but not to tell.

2010-12-05T22:22:00.000+01:00

Listen to ~~this song~~ these songs and you'll know how I feel.

'Terminated' would be too much.

2010-11-30T18:46:00.000+01:00

Dear x.
I don't know if I'm actually allowed to call you a stupid bitch for what you've done, or for what I've heard you've done, but anyway, the words form in my head and I can't stop it. Maybe this is overreacting, but I for sure have a reason to do so.
You flat-out lied to me. You could have hit me in the face with the same effect.
You can tell me about not having wanted this to happen all you want. I don't believe any of the shit you're saying.
You've brought me down. Congratulations.
~~Love,~~ Sophia.

Image via Förälskelse.

I just want your kiss.

2010-11-28T21:03:00.000+01:00

Why don't I ever learn?

2010-11-27T18:18:00.002+01:00

Snow is falling, little flakes are burying everything underneath. I'm staring out of the train window into the darkness, and Matthew Bellamy sings: "Loneliness, be over". I'm sitting somewhere, lots of people around me, and just know I have drunk too much. I catch the snow flakes in my open palm as I walk through the city in the dark. I spend too much money the next day, for everything and nothing. I'm staring out of the train window into the darkness again, and Amanda Palmer sings: "Don't tell me that you're off to see the world / I know you won't get very far / Don't call me when you get another girl, baby / Just call me if you get another car". I'm staring at the computer screen again, and minutes go by. Florence Welch sings: "You smashed a plate over my head / then I set fire to our bed", but there's no bed to set fire to.

I wait.

The image is by Juano Santos, and the songs I quoted the lyrics from are: "Map of the Problematique" by Muse, "Jeep Song" by the Dresden Dolls and "Kiss with a Fist" by Florence & the Machine.

shakespeare

2010-11-23T17:59:00.000+01:00

Shakespeare might be one of my favorite writers; and his quotes are always enjoyable & very true.

Make your way up to the stars, it's there where you belong.

2010-11-22T21:01:00.000+01:00

This can't be happening. It just can't.

Title from the song "You are Fading" by Editors. Image by me.

Projection again

2010-11-20T18:24:00.000+01:00

Everyone just keeps turning out to be so much less than I had thought them to be. Projection sends her love.

Image via the thinking tank.

Reality

2010-11-20T11:58:00.001+01:00

It seems like years since I last posted. I just wouldn't know what. Of course, there's stuff to say, but I've become increasingly bad at expressing my feelings in words.

But actually, it also feels as if I had started to live more in real life instead of... books. No idea if that's a bad thing.

Source of pictures: The Night Monarchy.

Benches

2010-11-19T15:58:00.001+01:00

I should laugh more.

Dawn and Sunset.

2010-11-10T18:14:00.001+01:00

There's still no great sense in posting, since all there ever is is (should be) be studying. I go to school in the morning when it turns and get out of school right at sunset. It's ridiculous.

Anyway, except for that, I'm re-building an old friendship and trying to tighten a new one. (I fail at the latter, I guess.)

Signing up for the NaNoWriMo was maybe the silliest idea, I'm stuck at 5000 words and no sign of inspiration. (If you have any ideas, let me know.)

Have a good week, world (:

Image found via etc.

Document

2010-11-07T11:06:00.000+01:00

I haven't written anything for weeks. Maybe it's because I don't want to spoil moments by fanatically trying to document them, maybe it's just because I don't want to face my own thoughts. I haven't read much, either.

School starts again tomorrow, and I can frankly say I'm so not ready to get back to this busy life. I wish I could just hang around forever. It's pointless to post right now, actually.

Click on image for link.

To insist

2010-11-04T15:43:00.003+01:00

"An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations."

- Charles de Montesquieu

Happy Halloween

2010-10-31T18:02:00.000+01:00

Have a happy Halloween, everyone, and don't get eaten by a troll in the dungeons.

The image is a screenshot from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

Six Words

2010-10-30T18:31:00.000+02:00

I must admit; I've never been a fan of Hemingway, which I can only explain with having read The Old Man and the Sea. Today, I have changed my mind, in only six words.

"For sale: baby shoes, never used."

It breaks your heart, doesn't it?

Imperfection

2010-10-28T18:24:00.001+02:00

Love is not blind. I see with single eye

Your ugliness and other women's grace.

I know the imperfection of your face,
The eyes too wide apart, the brow too high
For beauty. Learned from earliest youth am I
In loveliness, and cannot so erase
Its letters from my mind, that I may trace
You faultless, I must love until I die.
More subtle is the sovereignty of love:
So am I caught that when I say, "Not fair,"
'Tis but as if I said, "Not here--not there
Not risen--not writing letters." Well I know
What is this beauty men are babbling of;
I wonder only why they prize it so.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

Images via the thinking tank.

A juvenile whine

2010-10-21T16:42:00.000+02:00

(Don't read it, and if you do, please just pretend not to notice my immature voice. Thank you.)

This is the attempt to rationalize the recent developments in my personal life. As always, everything is about a special person (for whom I might need to make up a new label) and his effects on me. I've known him by sight for a couple of years, but never had any contact or anything, until we were both put together in the same class. It started as plain interest, but deepened heavily over the last few days (and here it begins to sound juvenile, and I know it is, but that doesn't make it any more bearable).

~~"Good signs": - He smiled at~~

It's too pathetic to even write it out. The thing is, now, that once in my life there seemed nobody and nothing to whine about, I felt the need to pull someone new in to have something to cry about. I can't even turn it off.

And I am so afraid of rejection that I can't even make a move. I can just wait and whine.

Before I get even more serious: Something good just happened.

Brighten the day

2010-10-18T17:34:00.000+02:00

If you had a similar horrible Monday as I did, I recommend you listen to the following songs which have brightened my day up extremely.

1. Sigur Rós - Gong

2. Lykke Li - Tonight

3. PJ Harvey ft. Thom Yorke - This Mess We're In

I'm pretty sleepy these days, but can't go to sleep at night. It's wicked. And all I can think of is you.

Glass Balloon

2010-10-17T17:42:00.000+02:00

I attended the Long Night of Munich Museums yesterday, and it was just wonderful. (For those who are interested, I visited the Rockmuseum Munich, the Lapidarium at the south cemetry, the Kunstarkaden and the America House. The image above is from the latter, which was by far my favourite.

Throughout the whole night, I had a voice in my head singing Hermit the Frog.

Well, my heart just burst like a glass balloon

I let it fly too high and it shattered too soon

I was the wrong damn girl in the wrong damn room

I broke my glass balloon, I let go off my glass balloon

And feeling what I feel, I guess it's right.

Click on image for link. Hermit the Frog is a lovely song by Marina & the Diamonds, you should check it out.

The Truth About Cats and Dogs

2010-10-12T12:05:00.000+02:00

So, since I'm stuck at home again with a cold, there isn't really anything productive to do except for putting off homework and studying as long as possible, so just the usual. If you don't know him yet, I'd really like to recommend the writer Haruki Murakami, especially his books Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore. The latter is what I'm currently reading, actually, and I can barely put it down.

And if you feel the way I do today - tired, so just like any other day - I'd recommend you just go back to bed and listen to this song that I've just discovered on FM4 (an Austrian radio station, actually pretty good): The truth about cats and dogs by Pony up.

waiting to begin

2010-10-10T19:53:00.001+02:00

All that I wanted were things I had before
All that I needed I never needed more
All of my questions are answers to my sins
All of my endings are waiting to begin

Slipknot: Circle.

Who doesn't want to be the girl in the red dress? I'm always stuck in a certain frame, a moment, a shell, and it keeps be from being what I am. There's just too many excuses to ever begin, and so I wait.

Images via weheartit.

Rootless

2010-10-03T12:55:00.000+02:00

For a root
For a leaf
For a branch
For a tree

For something, somebody
that reminded them of me...

Image via the thinking tank, lyrics by Marina & the Diamonds.

I can never reach you

2010-09-27T18:36:00.000+02:00

That was quite a bunch of hateful posts yesterday. Sorry about that, and don't pay too much attention to the poem. Anyway, everything's better today (as always). Everything is always better on the day after/tomorrow.

And it rained all night and washed the filth away
Down New York airconditioned drains
The click click clack of the heavy black trains
A million engines in neutral

(Thom Yorke, And it rained all night)

Image via hellane.

if you don't know, you'll never.

2010-09-26T20:34:00.001+02:00

On filling pages, another love poem for people I don't love (which is what I tell myself). (And by the way, I have read Sylvia Plath by now, so at lest I don't have to be ashamed about that anymore.)

If I was to write a love poem for you,
it would be all about blame
angry words, bitterness, and
what you've made of me

(a beast, howling when noone listens,
a leaf, falling from the tree,
rootless, lifeless, blind)

The poem would fill libraries
of CAPITAL LETTERS,
not to forget, a hundred exclamation marks,
but I don't scream.)

No longer lack of filling pages
the story of us winds endlessly
and while most of it would be nothing but
what I've grown to feel for you

(pity hatred anger jealousy,
but always, always "love")

the rest I could never write.

For now, we will stay this way,
if you don't know, you'll never,
and once out paths will part, and
maybe then, you won't be in my heart.

(I hope.)

(I know what has become of me.)

Image by the photographer Anna Amphigorously.

No Miracles.

2010-09-26T18:14:00.001+02:00

TV told me how to feel
now real life has no appeal
it has no appeal
it has no appeal
it has no appeal
it has no appeal.

Image via Recordis Photography, words by Marina & the Diamonds.

Dreams, gone.

2010-09-20T17:44:00.000+02:00

Since you're gone, I can't take the thought of Russia. I can't think of it, or hear the word without a twitching in my heart. It's unfair and stupid, but it's true. I can't read Tolstoi and Gogol anymore or even think of going there someday.

I wanted so bad. I wanted to see these beautiful buildings of Moscow that you sent me postcards of. I wanted to go all the way from Moscow to China with the Trans-Sibiran Railway reading War and Peace.

Now all my dreams of Russia are just gone.

Image via The Thinking Tank.

Unbearable Lightness

2010-09-19T21:34:00.001+02:00

Life has become so restless again, I can't remember the last time I spent the evening at home. As a result of that, I'm tenser and jumpier than ever, and I weep much more easily. Also, I have begun reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera:

"We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come."

Image via Sid Black's flickr.

A bad moment

2010-09-14T22:11:00.000+02:00

I went back to school today, and I already see my life being stressful and hectic again. I see autumn lying in front of me, and this year, there's really nothing to guide my way. There's nothing in sight that would make it any more worth, or endurable.

My life doesn't work in poetry or beauty. My thoughts are not beautiful or poetic. Pretty pictures and music that speaks from my heart doesn't make me happy anymore. I don't feel like reading the books that I pick up. It's as if I was lacking purpose. I drag myself from day to day.

Maybe that's how you felt when you went.

I'd like to tell you that I don't see the world in such drastic way, but that's what it is. I know it's not that bad, and I know it's a bad moment to write about it, because I change my mind any moment these days, but every moment seems to be a bad moment.

Image via Audrey Hepburn Complex.

the last day

2010-09-13T22:29:00.000+02:00

So, it's the last day of summer holidays, and it somehow feels like last year, with the difference that I was so unbelievably confident last year, and happy. I'm not unhappy, but things could be better. Mostly, I just feel so cut off, but I guess that will change tomorrow.

A year stretches out in front of me again like a wall, and I'm not sure where to begin. I'll see you tomorrow, I guess.

The Last Day.

Image found here.

someone else's dream

2010-09-08T22:33:00.000+02:00

A truth, only a breath away, is about to fall apart

locked in someone else's dream, life loses its stinging touch

So burden your paradise and shoulder your gun

it's a long way to go, especially when you run

And armies will march along

and carry their deathly drums

smashing in a rhythm

that was once described

as -

The halo of gold and dust

from the old, forgotten time

it smacks the right one in the place

when you lose, you're all alone

Lonely only in these hearts

it's time to remember

The forest is not deserted

it only shows what you want to see

take your gun and hurry up

it's time to wake the memory

And armies will march along

carrying their deathly drums

smashing in a rhythm

that was once described

as-

fate.

First image is a screen capture from the movie Inception, second from Lady Gaga's music video Alejandro.

Sweetest

2010-09-08T21:49:00.001+02:00

Sweetest von violetxclouds, multicolor jewelry enthaltend

today, the sky is grey, and the sun shines, but my heart whines.

2010-09-05T12:45:00.001+02:00

But I am not complaining.

I have some book recommendations, though I am afraid they're not translated into English yet: Axolotl Roadkill (which is a plagiarism, totally pompous and doesn't make too much sense, but apart from that a quite interesting book) and Herzzeit, which consists of the correspondence between Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan (about whom I have written here before). I am sorry to mention these two books in one post, but that is pretty much what is bothering me for now, and now it's out.

And about the image: I reversed the colours. Found on a beautiful revolution

change

2010-09-02T11:18:00.000+02:00

I knew you from elementary school. I had seen your face a thousand times, sometimes looked at it twice, sometimes meeting your glance. Sometimes looking away quickly, embarrassed that you had seen me stare.
No, wrong turn.
You were nothing special to me, and what I was to you, I'll never know. I remember your friends' whispers after me a year after our ways were split as we went to different schools, but sometimes met at the bus station, pretending not to know each other. One time, I heard your friends. They were laughing, telling me you were in love with me as I passed them. I blushed and went on more quickly. I avoided looking at you in the bus, but always hoped you'd look my direction. You did, sometimes.
We were never friends, and yet, I still feel as if I knew you after all these years (6, it's 6 years now), better at least than most others from our elementary school class. They'd become stupid, smoking, drinking shadows of what they wanted and promised to be as children. During my first years at school, I always thought that we were all the same. There were no great differences between us; no great character features had crystalized yet. I couldn't imagine people to be less smart or less pretty than others. I couldn't imagine that there were people different from me.
And they all turned out to be. My best friend from elementary school and I kind of lost touch. About once a year, we still see each other, and sometimes it seems as if we had never been apart. But she's so different now, and being friends like we used to would never be possible. Others I had never even spoken to when we were children turned out to be exactly the people I'd like to be around, people who later developped similar interests as I did and shared opinions with me on certain subjects.
And you, you were there all this time, and looking at you, I feel as if I hadn't changed. You haven't, not really. You're still this freckled, dark-haired boy with kind eyes and ancestors from Spain. Your voice is different, but I almost never hear you speak, and I guess your taste in music differs a bit from mine from what I sometimes happen to hear through your earphones. Or used to.
Because now, as I still go to school, you're done. You're off somewhere to have another tuition or work already, I wouldn't know. And it's possible that I'll never see you again.
And while the thought of seeing other people I was much closer with doesn't seem scary or sad or anything at all, the thought of never seeing you again, never having the chance to finally talk to you about something - like, how everything turned out to be so different - fills me with an unnamed horror.
We were never friends. We never talked to each other much. Maybe this is just me. But you feel familiar, and at this point, having lost illusions and hopes for all that seemed so granted, familiarity and safety is all I want. I want to tell you things. I want you to tell me things. And mostly, I want to go back and be a child again.

Image via Virgina Woolf.

future and past

2010-08-31T18:06:00.000+02:00

A couple of months ago - I don't remember, but it must have been autumn - I sent myself an e-mail via FutureMe.org, and surprisingly, it arrived today. Last time I got such a mail, I was expecting it, but this one hit me out of the blue, and I'd like to share with you (changing names, though). So here it goes:

Dear FutureMe,
i hope you're fine and alive. i received the last future-me-mail just seconds ago, and since i feel really touched by the wisdom of my own words, i want to give myself a little hold in the future.
i tried to be happy, and it didn't work. i tried to make a decision between my creativity, my social needs and all i have to do for school. i got a D in chemistry today, and i deeply regret not having understood or at least learnt the stuff. i wish i wouldn't have let me sweep away so easily. i already wrote half my notebook full with poetry and stuff for my novel, and little notes or quotes.
in the weeks before the autumn holidays, i have built a friendship with (someone). i don't know if that will still exist in the future, or whatever will have happened to us. today however, i feel as if i had drifted away from him a lot, or rather, he from me. does he want to end our friendship?
and what if he does?
i don't know if there's a future with (my boyfriend at that point) - you will know, little summer girl. i feel very far away from him now, and sometimes i don't even know why. why everything.

some advice.
1. read good books. if you're desperate with yourself and your life, read "20 fragments of a ravenous youth" by xiaolu guo again. it will help you breathe and not feel so wasted.

2. listen to music that makes you happy. think of the beatles, norah jones and the chocolate soundtrack.

3. movies? chocolat and amelie of course, but also... actually love, tiger and dragon, some austen movie or erin brockovich.

4. watch the gilmore girls.

5. check out http://iidantunnelmia.blogspot.com/ if you have stopped to follow it some time ago. it's lovely.

did you go to spain? did you spend the summer with (that boyfriend again)? are you in love? i hope you made whatever made you happy.

or just read this:

Helsinki is so beautiful today. I wish I had the words to describe it but I don't.

But if you can imagine a city that's not only beautiful, but also rugged and wonderfully real. Summers that are full of white nights and yellow days, seagulls screaming and trams rattling. Autumns of orange leaves and pale blue skies and gusty winds. Winters of darkness, and snow, and ice skating in the indigo-coloured evenings. Springs, when streams of melting snow run into the gutter, and the city seems so young.

(written by Iida)

you know you can be happy. you just have to find balance and inspiration.

xxxxx

It's so sad. I think I have forgotten all this kind of happiness, all this looking outside of myself. I'm so consumed with my own thoghts, and feelings, and regrets, that I can't see anymore. Everything is just about not being worth it, and not being able to write anymore, and fearing failure and being afraid.

Or it's different, and there's just nothing.

I didn't go to spain, I didn't spend the summer with that boy. It just all faded and I watched.

2010-08-08T10:47:00.000+02:00

I'm off for holidays, part I. Have a good time, everyone.

Images via hellanne.

Wait for You

2010-08-04T16:32:00.000+02:00

I can't wait until tomorrow and at the same time, I don't want it to come. I shiver at the bare thought of you, but I'm not afraid.

Just in case you'll ever find this, or I'll show you.

Image via the thinking tank.

Proof and Instrument (one-shot)

2010-07-25T16:32:00.001+02:00

This fic has been lazing around on my computer for ages, so I thought I'd finally post it.

Proof and Instrument

One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them,
One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
(Lord of the Rings)

Nobody knew where Walburga's propensity to force her will on others came from. Neither Orion, who was more than indulgent about that, nor her father, who never cared about that or her at all, and certainly not her mother, whom she could, in the end, only pity.
Walburga had been raised by her aunt, Cassiopeia, who was 20 at the time she was born and lived in Cornwall, husband- and childless. Once Walburga came into the age to take note of that, she began to pity her aunt, and worse, disdain her for it, for never having been able to draw a wizward's attention to her, while her mother, who was still at Hogwarts at that time, had her first child at the age of thirteen. To her disapproval, Cassiopeia didn't defend herself when Walburga pointed it out, but instead sent her out of the room. Later, when Walburga came back on tiptoes to eavesdrop at the key hole, she heard her aunt sob bitterly.
It might not surprise anyone that Walburga despised her even more afterwards.
Things turned worse, and finally Cassiopeia gave in and convinced Walburga's parents that they had savoured their youth enough. At the age of 7, Walburga finally met her parents.
Her mother was as young as Cassiopeia had been when she had started living with her, but her face was completely different from Cassopeia's at that time, which Walburga had seen on photographs. For some reason, noone had ever cared to give her a photograph of her parents, and she had never asked for one. All the more surprising it was to see them for the first time. Very obviously, they had not planned to make their daughter's arrival at their house very private. Instead, they had decided to throw a party. When Walburga arrived with her suitcase - Cassiopeia left her at the doorstep, said goodbye and hurried away, she didn't really seem to be sad about getting rid of Walburga, and neither was Walburga of leaving her - a servant opened the door. The girl, having lived with her poor and servantless aunt, had never seen a servant in her whole life, but had luckily read enough to know how to treat one.
"Take my suitcase", said the 7-year-old with the voice of an old lady who was used to everyone trying to please her. The servant raised an eyebrow, but did as he was told. Another one held the door open for her and took her coat. Without a word of welcome, Walburga was greeted at her new home.
Inside the house, music was roaring from an old gramophone, and about twenty people in the most fancy wardrobe Walburga had ever seen were either dancing or making conversation close to the bar. The girl of course, whose most fancy dress was a black robe with little embroideries around the neck, seemed slightly de trop.
But as she watched all these beautiful people philander and dance and laugh morally in the decorated salon, she felt, for the first time in her life, as if she had found the place to be.
To attract attention, she coughed slightly, and some faces turned. "I'm looking for my parents.", she said commanding. "They live here."
People began to whisper secretly, until a very tall and slim woman at the top of her beauty made her way through the crowd and came towards Walburga. When she reached her, she stood still and looked down on her. Walburga refused to look away, and finally the woman smiled and held out her hand. "I'm Irma Black.", she said, and Walburga's heart stopped beating for a second. Slowly, she took her hand and squeezed it lightly. "And you're Walburga, aren't you?" She winked. From behind, a young wizard approached.
"Of course she is, Irm.", he said, mischievously. "She has your intonation." The woman laughed and shot him a flashing smile.
"This is Pollux, Walburga, your father." Walburga, who was suddenly intimidated by her parents' beauty and happiness, only smiled shyly. Her father took her hand, too, and turned to the guests. "Now the reason for all of us gathering here has arrived. After all these years, mine and Irma's daughter, Walburga Black has finally come home!"
Everybody was suddenly smiling at her, too, and Walburga felt her confident smile return as they raised their glasses and drank a toast to her "youth, beauty and pure blood". As her parents, one at each of her sides, pulled her back to the guests, her mother whispered something in her ear that Walburga would never forget.
"By the way, I didn't pick your name. I would have thought of something prettier, but your boring aunt insisted. No wonder no wizard wanted to marry her." To Walburga's left, her father chuckled and took a sip of his drink.

As years passed, her parents gave Walburga many beautiful robes, much expensive jewelry and way too much good advice on how to live her life considering that they themselves lived supremely sinful lives. After few months, Walburga had gotten tired of her father's ignorance and her mother's simplicity, althogh she preferred this new life full of balls and parties and fancy dresses and champagne over her old one, filled with boredom, work and reading. Once her parents had found the joy of having her as a child, or rather doll, they produced two more: Alphard, who would later be disowned, and Cygnus III.
The Blacks were, as she was told, a very old wizarding family, and very proud of their "pure blood", which, as Walburga found out, made them better and more valuable than others, such as "those bloody Muggles, mudbloods and similar scum". From the first moment, it made total sense to her. She had always known or felt that she was better than this lonely, hard life that Cassiopeia lead. She had always known that she belonged on the bright side of life.
Among her housemates, she found much agreement on that when she came to Hogwarts and was sorted into Slytherin house. The only thing that reduced her excitement was that she had encountered a girl on the train whom she had found very pretty and nice and with whom she had gotten as close to being friends as the few hours they spent on the train allowed. However, the Sorting Hat put that girl into Gryffindor, which was despised by Walburga's housemates. She did not mourn long; What causes trouble has to go, her father had once told her in one of the few hours the two of them actually spent together alone. Soon, Walburga had found others more worth of her attention.
In her second year, a boy attended Hogwarts who would cause much fuss in the course of time. From what Walburga witnessed, he was both handsome and intelligent, which made him approximately perfect, but what she could not prevent herself from noticing was that he had a very vicious smile sometimes when he thought noone was watching him, and who seemed very charming but never harmless. That boy's name was Tom Riddle.
In her fifth year, her future husband Orion Black arrived at Hogwarts. At their first encounter, he seemed to see nothing but her while she saw everything but him. It could only get better from there. On their wedding day, Walburga cried for the first time in her life, and not from sadness.
But the true meaning of this marriage for her was power. In her family, she would always be the daughter, the less pretty version of her mother, who was only slightly older than she was. Plus, Irma Black had turned out to be a very indifferent person towards her daughter's pains and thoughts, and was not rarely cruel to her. Walburga was not exactly hurt, since the relationship with her mother had never gotten deeper than those first months of admiration and excitement, but she began to want to get away from her.
Orion seemed like the perfect possibility for that, since she could not count on her mother soon falling sick and becoming needy. By the time her mother would be old and in need of help and pity, so would be Walburga, while in Orion's family, she was the head. The ring she had around her finger was both proof and instrument of her power and force.
And she was going to do justice to that.

Things turned out different, though. Shortly after her wedding, her mother fell sick with cancer, became horrible to look at and died few months later. Her father, however little he cared for his daughter, was affected deeply by his wife's death and passed away about one week after her demise.
But all of that was long ago and over, and now, both Orion and their son, Regulus, were dead, and Walburga was alone in this huge house, with a house elf and all those memories. All these balls, and all these dresses... in the end they hadn't saved her from pain or solitude. She couldn't even face to see Bellatrix and Narcissa, her nieces, anymore, ever since she knew how Regulus had died. He had died through the wand of that boy, one year younger than her. That little beautiful boy with the charming smile and the vicious moments. That vicious creature.
After all, all that was left to Walburga was her ring, the ring that had once given her so much power, and now only power over a house elf. The good years are still to come, she kept thinking. The good years of happiness and power. What I've had was only a little taste.

And six years later, she still thought, The good years are still to come. In her defence it must be said that, however, her last thought was directed at her disowned and accursed runaway son, Sirius, and if she had been an equally bad mother as hers.

So many books, so little ideas

2010-07-21T20:28:00.000+02:00

What do I have to tell the world that hasn't already been said?

Picture via accio!

something

2010-07-06T16:38:00.001+02:00

I'm so tired this week, although I had plenty of sleep. Maybe it's just the weather, or another crisis. Sometimes, like today, I just feel as if there's noone there to talk to about the things I care about. I don't know any other people to tell which books I'm reading or what else is on my mind. I'd like to tell somebody something, but there's just noone there.
Will I ever have someone who's just like me? 16 years, and I somehow doubt it.

Picture via .la douleur exquise.

sunday

2010-07-04T15:00:00.000+02:00

Sunday is both my least favourite and my favourite day of the week. First, Sunday is the last day of the weekend, and tomorrow is Monday. But Second, Sunday is the day to do nothing. Today, I can write fanfiction, listen to music or read. I can feel tired and wasted without feeling guilty.

Picture via teacurtain. If you're annoyed by my lack of posts, take a look at my tumblr.

I write the truth into a thousand books, and still, I cry.

2010-06-30T17:31:00.000+02:00

Pictures via .la douleur exquise., unknown, [sofia coppola] and here.

Deathly Hallows

2010-06-29T15:37:00.000+02:00

I don't have words for this - maybe I'll have later, when I am able to type and breathe and speak again.

stone

2010-06-27T21:41:00.001+02:00

stone.
slime. forgetting
you and everything
we used to love
Love

Picture via Virginia Woolf.

ghost world

2010-06-25T21:17:00.001+02:00

I saw this movie today, Ghost World, that really
I feel like a fake today, because I watched that movie and I don't know why but it made me feel so... fake.

I guess all I can say is that it really left me speechless.

on reading

2010-06-22T21:28:00.000+02:00

let me write down one thing straight that has been bothering me forever. there's a lot of stuff i don't know about literature or movies, although these might be two of the things my life i should be very familiar with since it's more or less what my life, as pathetic as it sounds, revolves around.

yes, i have read a lot of books. i have read and own more books than anyone my age that i know personally. but still, there's just a huge range of things i've never read. heard of, yes, admired, yes, from a distance, researched on the internet, yes, but read?

no.

i haven't read jack kerouac's "on the road" and not huckleberry finn. i have struggled to finish oliver twist and never touched my copy of "war and peace" which i got for christmas 2 years ago because i put it on my wishlist.

shame on me.

Photo via accio.

Projection (one-shot)

2010-06-19T11:03:00.002+02:00

This is my very first one-shot written in English. Fandom: HP, of course.

It's always hard to lose friends, especially those we expect to be something more than they are now. Those we put our hopes of future and happiness in. Those who promise to be much more to us in the future.

Parvati had always knownthat there were nice and mean people in the world, although she had never noticed that this did not only affect the characters that populated children's books, but also the people that surrounded her. Her parents had warned her about those people, but unlike her sister, she had never really paid attention.

A bright smile and a short wave of the hand were enough to ensure her sympathy; nice words about her robe and a compliment on her hair were enough to gain her friendship. That may seem very naive, but up to that point, Parvati's view of the world had always proven to be right. The one who bought her ice cream couldn't really mean her any harm. The one who smiled would perhaps not be the one who would hex her. And the one who made promises had, until then, not broken them yet.

It turned out that one really didn't mean her any harm; but that didn't include the harm on others. Thus, Parvati had to find the borders of this simple kind of making friends. She had to learn that she could not trust everyone to make the same decisions she made.

Parvati met Pansy Parkinson in the Hogwarts Express for the first time. The girl was surrounded by two others, who both later turned out to be Slytherin, just like Pansy. On the train, anyway, that didn't matter. Neither Parvati nor Padma really cared about the controversy between the houses, at first. What they cared about was, that Pansy Parkinson had, even though her face was surely not as pretty as the ones of the Patils were, a very pretty robe and well neat hair. Unlike most other first-graders, she seemed to be into make-up already and was talking about the latest issue of Witch Weekly with her two friends when the twins approached her cabin.

"Hello.", said Parvati, insecure if they should come in or stay out. Pansy looked up and eyed them both, before flashing a smile and nodding. "Why don't you come in?", she said in a voice that did not at all match her face. Parvati and Padma looked at each other and sat down next to the girls. For two seconds, there was an awkward silence.

"So, what do you think about Gilderoy Lockhart?", asked Pansy and raised one eyebrow, again examining them both. Parvati relaxed. This was a question she could handle.

When they left the train, Parvati and Pansy Parkinson were friends.

This did not change when they were sorted into different houses, and it did not change when they discovered that Gryffindors and Slytherins were not really supposed to be friends. But like every other friendship between girls, it was challenged by a boy, and it turned out that it collapsed at this point.

Parvati had not meant to defend Neville Longbottom, but she felt sorry for him when Madam Hooch walked him off to the hospital wing, and a sudden wave of anger grasped her when she heard Malfoy laugh.

"Did you see his face, the great lump?" He picked up the Rememberall.

That was when Parvati lost it. She didn't even really think about what to say. "Shut up, Malfoy."

From behind Draco, she heard Pansy's familiar voice mocking. "Ooh, sticking up for Longbottom? Never thought you'd like fat little crybabies, Parvati."

For the first time in her whole life, Parvati knew what it was like to be betrayed. And not only betrayed, but, ten times worse, betrayed by a friend, by someone she had counted on to back her.

That was the moment when Parvati knew that Pansy Parkinson was not her friend.

It is always hard to lose a friend, but it is even harder to find out that some people are different from how we estimated them. That some people turn out to be so much less than we could have ever thought. There are not many things worse than this kind of loss of projection.

You can find it here.

lovely

2010-06-18T13:54:00.000+02:00

i am very happy to announce that i have just been given my second award ever, by my lovely blogging friend Kipa. Make sure to check her blog out - it's really cute.

The rules of The Lovely Blog of Randomness Award are:
1. Display this award in some way on your blog.
2. Name 17 of your favorite random things.
3. Award 4 of your favorite random bloggers!

So here are those I award:

Cat Kerr, a girl whose name I don't know, Paula J. and AlpHa Buttonpusher.

1. I could list 17 characters from Harry Potter, but the truth is that I love many more of them than 17, so I'm just gonna say: the genius magical universe of Harry Potter and
2. its creator, JKR.
3. the smell of books
4. chocolate
5. coming home on a friday after school and knowing there's a whole weekend in front of you
6. watching the clouds
7. typewriters
8. (in a really small voice:) twilight.
9. re-reading books a thousand times
10. turning up the volume of music until my ears hurt
11. the smell of smoke
12. fireworks
13. daisies
14. my penchant for ridiculous self-display
15. reading all night, until it dawns
16. ireland and
17. sheep.

thank you very much for listening.

Pablo Neruda

2010-06-13T18:17:00.000+02:00

If suddenly you do not exist,
If suddenly you are not living,
I shall go on living.

I do not dare,
I do not dare to write it,
if you die.

I shall go on living.

- Pablo Neruda.

Photo via ┼.

a morning

2010-06-09T16:49:00.000+02:00

This is a text I have written a few weeks ago. It was a very grey day.

After I'd shut the door behind the last guest, I went back up to the room where we'd been, put all the trash and the dirty plates on a pile and lay down on the matress against the wall while the music was still blaring through the loudspeakers.
after I'd almost drifted off to sleep twice, I got up, turned off the light and went to my bedroom. There, I changed into my "I'm-sick"-clothes and a warm sweater, took a book I'd recently bought from the book shelf and lay in bed.
Then, I began to read, soon forgetting where I was and what time it was (long after midnight). After a couple of hours, I made the first try and turned off the light, but sleep wouldn't come. I just kept staring at the dark sky through my dormer, listened to the light rain drops hitting the glass and felt how I became more awake every second.
Hours later, it began dawning, I finally turned the last page, read the Ackknowledgements and, after a while, went to sleep. I didn't dream.
Somewhen before noon, my father came into the room, asking if I wanted to continue sleeping (yes), and said he and my mother would go for a walk. Through the open window, I heard them walking around the garden for a while, talking about the plants and the snails. After a while, I couldn't hear them anymore, so I figured either they had gone too far away for me to hear or I'd gone to sleep again.
When I woke this time, it was oddly silent. As I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth (that felt disgustingly poisonous), it stopped pouring outside. The sky had turned completely white; that kind of white that hurts your eyes whenever you look at it.
The house was completely empty, everything left just like it was, as if everybody had left in a sudden hurry. Even my cat wasn't in. The table in the living room was still set; my parents had had breakfast and left everything there for me. I sat down and stood up again, went to the kitchen and sat there on the kitchen table while the water began to boil.
God, I thought, I never noticed how goddamn quiet this place is.
Was it going to be like this every day?
With the steaming tea cup still in my hand, I sat on the couch in the living room and flipped through the tv channels. nothing. some german rapper had his mtv unplugged and made a fool of himself, accompanied by another german singer who always had pathetic love songs with german lyrics. i put in a dvd i had wanted to watch in months and turned it off after a few minutes.
then i just sat there and waited for my parentes to come home and fill the place with something; with voices, with movement, with life.
meanwhile, i put my head under a pillow and thought about how the black sky in my dormer had turned blue and how i had suddenly found my head filled with birdsong.
this was madness.

Photos via ┼.

heart attack

2010-06-07T22:20:00.000+02:00

My heart has to start beating again. I think it just stopped.

something to do

2010-06-06T19:51:00.000+02:00

This is what I've been wondering for the past few days, only that it wasn't cold, but very hot outside. To sum it up, my grandmother's birthday was exhausting, but I got to talk to my great-cousins a bit and one of them gave me a polaroid-camera. You can imagine my excitement.

Today is the last day of holidays, and tomorrow, I'll be off to school again. I don't actually mind, really. I haven't been to school for 3 weeks, and it's getting pretty ... boring? I'm not sure.

In any case, it will give me something to do other than think about my own thoughts.

Picture from here.

agreeably

2010-06-02T22:52:00.000+02:00

i'll be gone for a few days again; it's my grandmother's 80th birthday. anyway, when i'm back, there will be plenty of new, heart-wrenching posts and some brand-new stuff written by me.

by the way, here, you can listen to the eclipse soundtrack for about 24 hours or something. i have to say, i'm pleasantly surprised by the songs. looks as if the bands sold their souls, but not their skills.

today, i've bought a couple of new books (about 5, including a cook book. i wonder what i was thinking!) and started reading jane austen's unfinished novel the watsons, which also agreeably surprised me. i'm about halfway through, and i really enjoy reading it. more about that somewhen later, too.

have a nice couple of days, everyone.

Picture via ┼.

only for us

2010-06-01T22:21:00.000+02:00

darkness, snow, fire, smile
black is the new alive

you broke her heart
and i'll break yours
this is how it works
only for us

there is no map no book
no movie where you'd find crap
such as us

don't understand, analyze
that's when you don't know how
life gets so messed up if you know
it doesn't last
live every minute or waste your time

trust is a precious gifr
and love is nice, too
but i don't really think
i deserve either of those

you wanto to trust me
even though noone does
but i'm not falling for you
or the white dove

pure wine is the truth
but i don't drink
because it's bitter, and then we lose

you broke her heart
and i'll break yours
this is how it works
only for us.

Pictures via ┼.