Spelunking in the subconscious

I feel a little brave today

as God is by my side

inciting me to go down there

where all bad feeling hide

It's not a very pleasant place

with swamp and old dead trees

and every time I've been down here

I've prayed: "Get me out, please"

Submerged in rotting stillness here

the stagnant waters stand

no lonely crow to make a sound

no one to take your hand

And in the dank and murky depths

preserved the corpses lie

of every dream that came and went

to prematurely die

Like a good birdwatcher

I must stay and wait to see

their lifeless bodies float and rise

to blindly stare at me

My willingness to stay down here

although reluctantly

is slowly causing miracles

as something moves in me

Down at the bottom of the pond

a heart begins to beat

rhythmic, strong and vivid red

it pulsates at my feet

A circulation starts to flow

through places long cut off from blood

a bright breeze rustles through the trees

fresh water flushes out the mud

Is there a chance here to redeem

these places long considered dead?

A chance that things could blossom here

and better times lay just ahead?

The icy time of year

                                                                     An icy embrace

Toe-shaped icicles

A hermit at the entrance of his cave

The Ice King

Plants on ice

Guideline

I have been searching for a path in life for a long time. I found this thing I wrote more than two years ago and feel it describes what I long for most in life, what I want to be my guideline, the golden light that guides me. This yearning cannot come from nowhere, I know that it is trying to lead me somewhere...

How would I know that I've reached a place of dignity and meaning?

I would feel infinitely safe, be covered and sorrounded by beauty and love. I would be involved and taken into account. They would believe in me, give me time, trust in my potential. I would be free to express myself and this would be appreciated. I would be free to dream and would receive help to realize these things. I would be playful and ready to experiment. We would do things simply for the beauty of doing them. Everything would feel meaningful, and I would be proud of having built up every little contact, every wonderful and simple experience. I might be completely by myself but not feel alone a single day. I would be incredibly, breathtakingly free to decide and to live, unbound by ties to the past and independent. I would have the complete and breathtaking freedom of an orphan. Everything I would start would be under a good star, chock full of good intention and positive energy, so that I would be very proud and very grateful. My contact to others would be pure and intense, guided by the stars. I would have so much fun, so incredibly much time to play. I would be truly dignified because I would love everyone, yet need no one. My ties are severed clean. In my heart I am free as a bird, my thoughts soar above the ocean. I have a secret perspective that nothing and no one can touch, it protects me and blesses me. Its name is freedom. It gives me the power to go anywhere and do anything. No one can ever know about it directly, it is the secret power that pulsates through me, the intense fire that lets me see and that keeps me safe. It is for everyone, but this bit is only for me. It burns me up from inside, leaving me cozy and warm in midst of a storm. It gives me the sense of adventure that I crave. I need no one to get there, only this invincible sense of autonomy that is, at the same time, a full and complete offering myself at God's feet. Show me the way, I'm ready. This is an unconditional freedom, it can't be destroyed or touched by anything. It will be the ship in a bottle locked deep in my heart, inaccessible to anyone but me. With it, nothing will be able to harm me. It is the locket with my secret fairy dust inside, it allows me to fly. It opens up the huge world to me, makes me a woman, a grown being. And above all it makes me happy and satisfied, allows me to find my right way among the shadows and off the beaten path. It electrifies and magnetizes me, making me find the way infallibly, like a pole. It shows me into antique bookstores, mysterious alleys, twinkling bars, happy markets and tough streets. During all this, it holds a protecting hand over me and my destiny. The feeling of butterflies, that tingling of adventure never goes away. It carries me and holds me, cradles me and protects me. The existentialist path of being completely autonomous carries me, makes me fly, sweeps me through the air in its magnitude, magnanimousness and infinite beauty and wisdom.

World's lamest gif

I'm so old-school.
I still usually draw on paper with a real pencil and then fill things in with real watercolors. But since the only kind of animation I could generate that way would have been one of those little notebooks with a tiny drawing on the lower corner of each page that you flick through with your thumb to create the "animation" effect, I decided it was time to learn to use Photoshop a little. And then I found a website where you can create gifs - so that was quite simple (http://www.createagif.net/).

Even though it doesn't look too dynamic, I do like to watch my little yellow bird fly across the screen.

Adventures of the Cherry-Blossom Princess

Despite being horrified by the things that have been happening in Japan recently, in this post I want to focus on a different aspect of the Japanese culture: their gardens.

 Like a real tourist, I went to the Japanische Garten in Hamburg's Planten un Blomen park on an autumn day and ate sushi. I love the salty soy sauce dense as ink and the juicy pink ginger and the tangy seaweed.

I even wrote a short story about a Japanese princess, which turned out sort of weird but was fun to do. I didn't know what names to use in the story. The princess I called Sakura (which I'd heard means flower, or more precisely cherry-blossom, and was the brand of some crayons I used to own and love). Then I remembered two friends who were not Japanese at all but were named Masumi and Hanako, and used those too.

On another note: I learned that Hanako is a very common name and is also the name of a female ghost who haunts school toilets, probably the original version of Harry Potter's Myrtle. One of my colleages looks just like Myrtle. Anyway, if you knock on the stall door three times asking: "Hanako-san, are you there?" she will appear, apparently dressed sort of like an anime schoolgirl, or so they say. For more on the urban legend of Toire no Hanako-san (Hanako of the toilet) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanako-san

Now the story. I can't believe I made my little sister go through years of telling her incoherent stories like this one every night, making them up as I went along. But she seemed to like them, at least she didn't complain - and probably they helped her get to sleep. I remember that one of them was about a tiny cow that lived in a guy's ear.


The Adventures of the Cherry-Blossom Princess
Once, in the faraway kingdom of Japan, there was a princess named Sakura, which means blossom in Japanese. She was lovely to look at and kind at heart. Her skin was the pinkish white of the lotus blossom, and her eyes were like sparkly black stars. Her father, the King, and she lived alone in a great palace surrounded by gardens of dwarf pine and ponds of water lilies. Sakura was her fathers’ greatest treasure.

One day as Sakura played alone by the pond, the terrible dragon Kobayashi captured her and locked her away in her castle tower. Many years ago, as he slept, the King had stolen his fire, and he wanted it back. So he told the King that to return his daughter, he must give back his fire. The King was distraught. When Kobayashi had had fire, he had used it to terrorize the people of his kingdom. But he also did not want to lose his only daughter.

The King was restless for many nights until he decided to look for someone who could help him: His wife had left him many years ago to follow the calling to become a Sorceress of the New Moon. He had been heartbroken and Sakura was only a baby. The Order of the New Moon lived at the top of a very high and sharp mountain, and the only way into their monastery was to walk behind a waterfall. The King took the journey of many days, only to find hat the waterfall had turned into a curtain of ice that covered the entrance to the cave. The King could see figures moving inside, but the ice was hard and thick as a wall.
When the King returned to his palace, he summoned the dragon and proposed to him a deal. If the dragon helped him open the way to the convent and gave him his daughter, he would give him his fire back. The dragon agreed and carried the King on his back to the cave, where he melted the entrance with the fire the King gave back to him. The dragon released Sakura, who had been locked in a basket on his back. When the waterfall melted, the cave door opened and the most beautiful, mysterious women were seen, wearing shimmering robes in all the colors of water and moonlight. Their leader was Queen Hanako, Sakura’s mother. She cried out in joy when she saw them and embraced her family. She and her order had been locked in the caves for seven years, as the sping had not grown warm as usual.

Hanako spoke to the King in private, and they made a plan. She told her Sorceresses to invite the dragon Kobayashi to join them for a meal. While he was not looking, Hanako sprinkled a magic gingko potion in his glass. As he drank it, his fire became cool and beautiful alike. As he spit fire, everyone admired its’ flames of color with awe and admiration, but were not burned. The dragon was wrathful at first, but saw how his fame and belovedness grew as it had never been, and forgave the King’s trick. Queen Hanako had learned all she could in the Order and had longed to return for many years. Now, she accompanied her King and Princess Sakura home to their palace.

I hope you enjoy the pictures - to me, an example of how total peace and beauty can coexist so seemingly effortlessly alongside horror in this strange world.
                                                              
Pics copyright M.S. 2011