Ecstasy Trilogy

Here are three ambient movies that I put online recently, each of them about 30 minutes long: „Mouse Pointer Feedback Ecstasy“, „Arboreal Ecstasy“, „Symmetric Jellyfish Ecstasy“. Wow, 90 minutes of ecstasy?

Ecstasy is not something we usually encounter in our daily lives, and different people have very different ideas about what it is. I just saw that Wikipedia has three different definitions!

The effect of the videos on the observer will vary, but all of them slow down time like the motion of liquid in lava lamps, or like Marian Zazeela’s extremely slow ornamental videos to La Monte Young’s drone music.

For the MTV generation that is used to very fast and hectic cuts, this will be unbearable to watch 🙂

1. Mouse Pointer Feedback Ecstasy


I used a toy microscope and filmed the microscope output on the screen – I pointed the microscope to its own images. This creates a video feedback loop, resulting in all sorts of effects. Because nothing much happens when filming an empty screen, resulting in more of nothing, I chose to film the mouse pointer from very close. Some postprocessing was applied (mainly, slowing down). The music is ambient music that I played on synthesizers and tape delays, back in the mid-eighties.

2. Arboreal Ecstasy


This was the first video designed to use as a backdrop for Georgina Brett’s set on my livelooping festival from last April. I filmed these trees out of my car while driving through forests in Washington and Northern California (usually, Sabine was driving and I held the camera). Postprocessing: Slowing down and some motion blur, and a mirror effect at the bottom of the video, to take out the street that was visible in the original. The mirror creates a nice effect that looks like a reflection on water.

I chose Georgina’s piece Leanate as soundtrack for this, and I slowed it down considerably using Paulstretch. Then two weeks before the festival it turned out that someone else had also planned to use trees for a backdrop video, so I dropped this, and created something new for Georgina:

3. Symmetrical Jellyfish Ecstasy


I had filmed these amazing creatures in an aquarium in Oregon. Postprocessing included slowing down, changing the colors, and introducing symmetry. The music I chose for this imagery consisted of a loop I had created a while ago (I have forgotten in the meantime how I did it); during the piece, several instances of this loop, running at different speeds, get superimposed.

Georgina’s gorgeous set with the jellyfish video behind her can be watched here.

Ladybug Chapel

Her birthday, a day off together, the sun was shining and it was very warm for an end-October day. We went to see an unusual little
chapel on a field somewhere west of Cologne. It was designed and built by Swiss star architect Zumthor for a family of farmers who felt grateful for a long and good life, and wanted to build a chapel.


 
We were not the only visitors on this wonderful day. We would have loved to have this very unusual place for us alone for a while, but so did the others. Maybe I’ll eventually come back here on a grey day outside the school holiday period.




 
The building is shaped like a tent, originally built out of 112 spruce trunks with layers of concrete on top. When it was finished, a drying fire burnt inside for three weeks. The trunks dried off the concrete and could be taken out. The walls on the inside, under the open roof, still show the shapes of the trees.


 
Lots of glass tubes connect the dark interior to the outside, creating dots of light in the walls. Sitting on the tiny bench beside the candles, it was totally quiet. The place has a very special atmosphere, but I found that I felt much more in a meditative mood outside, on top of the open field near the chapel. Somehow it seems to be slighly unsettling to me to sit in a dark little room with no way to see if any other people are approaching. Some part of me feels safer alone on a hill where I can see in all directions.


 
For some reason, there was an invasion of ladybugs, flying around and sitting on the concrete of the chapel, hundreds of them.


 
We walked through a village nearby that turned out to be less interesting than we had hoped, but at least they had very good cake on offer.


 
In the evening, some shopping and dinner in Cologne. We saw the first signs of Christmas approaching, but also of the carnival season that officially starts on November 11. A big thing in Cologne, even more important than the puppets of the classical Hänneschen theater.





 
A stroll down the Rhine. We were too tired already to take a closer look at the amusement park on the other side. A nice day out!






Full of Love

Another week with 100+ people in this place that I’ve written about several times before. We had a full schedule and very little time but I managed to take a few walks, some of them in the late evening, walking with a moon shadow. I don’t know if these photos manage to give an impression of the incredible beauty of this place. Especially the sunny September days are breathtakingly beautiful here.

 
The teachings and exercises were about topics that I won’t try to describe here in detail, but some of it had to do with the source of intelligence, as described in Almaas’s book about „Brilliancy“. And connected to that, complex stuff such as the oedipal complex and how it influenced our capacity to feel and express passionate love, or our tendency to sublimate this love into ways that were less difficult in the contact to our parents. Many participants, including myself, had very moving experiences of deep love. Amazing what capacities are waiting to be uncovered in us.

 
And no, even if these retreats take place in a Christian monastery, this stuff doesn’t have anything to do with Christianity 🙂























Jumping Ice

While New York, just shaken by an unusual earthquake, prepares for a severe tropical storm, we’re having much more harmless weather conditions here, but unusual as well: today we had a hailstorm, something rare for this area.





 
While I took some photographs, hail jumped through the open terrace door, some of the ice balls made it all the way to the other end of the house.


 
Our water lilies got perforated …

 
Several loads of torrential rain followed in the hours after the hail. And we discovered that the skylights in Sabine’s room aren’t completely tight – one of them above her bed. The mattress was partly wet. We had to drag it in front of the heating, hoping it will dry soon. Adventure!









When in Rome

In the afternoon of the second day of the Florence Livelooping Festival, Fabio Anile (who had to work on Monday morning and could not stay for the evening concerts), Michela and me drove down to Rome.

Fabio had invited me for a couple of days to make music together. We share a love for livelooping, ambient, and minimalist polyrhythmic music, and we had already played together on loopfestivals in Berlin and Cologne – here is what the final minutes in Cologne sounded like:

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I stayed in Fabio’s place for several days, and on each day when he came home from work in the afternoon, we improvised together for several ours, and recorded everything. It will take some time to listen through all of this! Some of the improvisations will probably be good enough for a CD as they are, some others need some working on, and some might be used as a sketch for a composition. The music that we produced was quite beautiful and dreamy, often involving silence or very few notes.
Not surprisingly, the food was also very good 🙂




 
Of course, being in Rome, I also did the tourist thing – wonderful !





 
„Peters is super“ – yes, but there are still some typos in there ! Please try again.














 
On my last morning in Rome, before going to the airport, Fabio drove me to Tivoli, a few miles outside of Rome, where we took a look at Villa Adriana. „Villa“ is a somewhat misleading word for this huge complex of buildings. This amazing place had been home for a while to a Roman emperor who liked it better than his palace in the city – I could understand why. Of course I did not only take photos but also binaural recordings with „headphone“ microphones (wearing my furry black windshields which Fabio found very funny).








A Suitcase Full of Stars

Another Livelooping festival, this time in beautiful Florence …

 
Some of you might remember the sentence „my god, it’s full of stars“. Another situation, but one could also say this about my new suitcase that I had to buy because the airline that calls itself „Easyjet“ allows for only one piece of cabin baggage. For me as a travelling livelooper (well, occasionally), this is a bad restriction: I need to carry the laptop in one hand and the small Hohner G2 guitar in the other hand. I wouldn’t check in any of those two of course, and to put the laptop into my suitcase didn’t feel so safe. The solution for this was finally to get a large new dark blue suitcase that could contain not only my toothbrush and t-shirts but also the guitar, squeezed in diagonally. And to be able to recognize it at the baggage claim, I put lots of little fluorescent stars on it, on all sides. It looks really nice, and they glow in the dark!

 
Massimo Liverani the hero had organized the 4th International Livelooping Festival in Florence. And as if that wasn’t enough, he also housed us, fed us, drove us, and showed us around the town.

 
Among the liveloopers I met in Florence: Gareth Whittock, and his wife Emma, from Bristol …

 
Willie Oteri and Dave Laczko (WD-41, and I know the secret story behind this name now) from Austin, Texas …

 
Fabio Anile from Rome, with his friend Michela …

 
Rainer Straschill from Munich with Michéle …

 
Enrico Coniglio from Venice (right) who turned out to share some unusual passions with me (such as, wandering around with binaural microphones, or dipping a hydrophone into the sea and listening to fish) …

 
We walked around the old city after midnight … Roman statues, old bridges, cafes that were the birthplace of the futurist movement, and of course breathtaking buildings …

 
We drove up a hill to take the tourist look over the valley of Florence … the city and the area of Tuscany are amazingly beautiful, I want to come back and spend a vacation here!

 
The venue was an open air stage in a beautiful park. It was very warm, and families and kids were all around until very late.

 
My set was the last one on this day. I replaced Randolf Arriola from Singapur who couldn’t come.

My set had some weak moments, but all in all, I was very happy with how it developed, and I felt that this gig had been a significant step. Too bad my long pants had disintegrated unexpectedly the day before, I look a bit sloppy with my short pants, but it works if one closes one’s eyes and just listens to the music 🙂

The Sunday after the Saturday before. Massimo and his wife fed us with pasta, and we all sat together in a small garden under a fig tree, eating and having coffee and talking.

 
After this, most of the tired loopers went to bed again, while Fabio, Michela and me set off to Rome for the next adventure. Fabio had invited me to stay with him for a few days, to make music together. Because he had to work early on Monday, we missed the second day of the festival. Too bad but the first day had already been very enjoyable, with very nice sets of Giovanni Lami, Enrico Coniglio, Fabio Anile, and Rainer Straschill. (And me.)

Nuraghe Island 5: Paper Strip Beach

The coasts of Sardinia are quite beautiful. We found a couple of spots that looked like the Caribbean. And I found that the colors of the sea are much more convincing when I take photographs through my polarising sun glasses. This is how it looked when I was wearing these glasses:

 
Wind surfers riding the mistral …

 
A coastline full of natural sculptures (you can see the coast of Corsica here – the white line is the chalk cliff at Bonifacio) …

 
Some adventurous people had climbed the top …

 
Another beautiful beach with interesting snorkeling areas … unfortunately, there were some small, almost invisible jellyfish in the water that burned our skins when we touched them while swimming …

 
On the small island of La Maddalena: Lobster sculptures, glorious mysteries (vanished), heads of animals, a beautiful balcony …

 
Not sure what this butterfly is called …

 
One of the more beautiful beaches where we spent some hours was full of the dried leaves of some underwater plant. There were soft heaps of them that really looked like paper strips, shredded East German secret files maybe …

 
And on the last day, on arriving at the Alghero airport, we were greeted by lots of swallows who had turned all the lamps into houses …

Nuraghe Island 4: Close To The Edge

 
Bonifacio, sitting at Corsica’s southern end (in a way, the most southerly point of France) and one ferry hour away from northern Sardinia, is one of Corsica’s main tourist spots.

The old city is perched on top of a high cliff in a quite breathtaking way. Its large natural harbour is home of dozens of yachts, and in the summer, it is visited by giant cruisers almost on a daily basis. From our temporary base in northern Sardinia, we could see them slowly approach like spaceships.

 
The harbour part of Bonifacio is full of restaurants and very expensive t-shirt shops. We had a salade italienne and a jus d’orange after we arrived, and marveled at the various million-dollar-yachts, but to get to the old town on the cliff, we had to climb the steep road.

 
The city walls and the outer houses are sitting directly on the edge of the cliff. I wonder what it is like to live in such a house and maybe have breakfast on a balcony above the sea, with lots of nothing below you.

 
The old city itself is picturesque of course, but we really wondered why some of the money that gets spent by the thousands of daily tourists isn’t invested in renovation. Many of the houses were in a very bad shape. Obviously, the money disappears in the hands of people who find better ways to spend it. After all, tourists continue to come, regardless of the condition of the old town!

 
A short look at Christian violence fantasies, mostly because the church was a good place to sit and cool down for a few minutes after walking around in the heat … this life-sized wooden martyr scene, weighing hundreds of kilograms, was sitting on a platform that could be carried around for some Christian ceremonies, hopefully taking place in a cooler time of the year.

 
After climbing down to the harbour, we felt justified to dedicate ourselves to these two extremely delicious little beasts …

 
Time to go back to the ferry. This lovely lady in the waiting hall caught my attention because she was busy loudly browsing the frequencies on a Sony short wave radio. She seemed to really love this little box, and continued playing with it later on the ferry back to Sardinia. I enjoyed being treated with this unexpected avantgarde sound installation.

 
Leaving Corsica and France, back to Italy. It was good to have been back to this remarkable place. I had visited it once in 1988 together with my American girlfriend (a year before I met Sabine). We had been on a round trip on Corsica, and while visiting Bonifacio, we had even met her older sister and her sister’s husband, who happened to be here on that day during a cruise tour of the Mediterranean. Looking at my photos again from that time, I am surprised how young I was then … and how distant it feels. A different self.

Nuraghe Island 3: Towers of the Sky

Eastward across very windy plains full of large rocks surrounded by colorful flowers …

 
… towards a small place called Burgos which lies under an impressive castle … we wanted to take a closer look at it, or take a look downwards from the surrounding hills, but we got lost in the tiny streets of Burgos, couldn’t find our way, and were relieved to eventually find out again!

 
A few miles later, in the middle of nowhere, we saw this group of buildings and stopped to take a look. Sabine was delighted – it is called St. Sabina, mostly consisting of a beautiful little 10th century Roman church and a Nuraghe tower, one of about 700 on the island of Sardinia, dating back to perhaps 1800BC. The tower was in good shape, and I climbed up the dark stairway inside of it, built of huge uneven rocks. Being on top of it felt more like standing on a small hill.

 
Further northeast, we had seen an unusual looking plane flying back and forth at low altitudes, several times, and we had already wondered about it. We eventually found that our road led across a strange artificial lake filled with green water, Lake Coghinas. The plane came back, touched the water surface for a few seconds, and took off again – it was a fire fighter plane that was loading new water, probably on a training mission because we didn’t see forest fires anywhere.

 
We eventually reached Tempio Pausania, our destination for this day. The sky was very blue, but it was very windy and unusually cold – Mistral weather. Fortunately it ceased after two days.

 

Nuraghe Island 2: Fish Out Of Water

The name of the place was Bosa, the river was called Temo. I have never seen a river that was so full of fish – large ones, tiny ones, everywhere you looked there were fish, and in the evening, the surface of the river was criss-crossed by fish that swam around with their heads out of the water. They didn’t tell me why they did that (I spent two hours at the riverside with a hydrophone and headphones – the results were disappointing: the fish of Bosa don’t talk).

 
The old town of Bosa, beneath a large castle ruin, is a maze of picturesque cobblestoned paths and colorful little houses. The view from the castle over the beautiful wide valley is definitely worth climbing up there.

 
In the evening, we found a real good restaurant at the riverside, right opposite the decaying tannery buildings that were one of the sources of Bosa’s wealth many years ago.

 
The next day, on the way to the east, a visit to a medieval church, extramuros … a friendly dog followed us for a while … red poppies and hissing crickets in the heat, and a last look back to Bosa.

 

Nuraghe Island 1: Excited Shouting

Every evening there was a flight show in the Alghero old town, starring hundreds of excited swifts flying high speed manoevres above the roofs, while shouting loudly.

Alghero, which is considered the prettiest town on Sardinia, was our first base during the two weeks we spent in the north of Sardinia. We had a nice flat in the old town (but we had to close all windows and use ear plugs during the night because tourist activities were quite loud until about 3 am – excited shouting of another kind). 



 
After a few days, we got a car and started exploring the surrounding region – hills with a view and beautiful beaches.

 
We drove to see the cragged rocks of nearby Capo Caccia and climbed down (and later, up) hundreds of stairs to a stalactite cave; on the next day, we took a boat to the same area and marveled at it from the sea. On the way back to Alghero, we were accompanied by a group of dolphins which jumped out of the water …

Humming Tree

This year seems unusual, weather-wise, too much sun for April-May, too little rain, and the plants grow and are flowering more than ever before, or so it seems. At the moment, our Laburnum anagyroides (Golden Rain) is pretty amazing and if there is a quiet moment, without wind, cars, or planes, you can hear that the whole tree hums with bumblebees. What a great natural sculpture!



 
Postscript: our wonderful Golden Rain tree eventually was killed by voles – apparently the roots were tasting too good, and I could pull the big plant out of the soil with one hand.

2011: A Livelooping Weekend

This was the weekend of the 2nd international Livelooping Festival in Cologne – I had organized the first one almost 3 years ago, and for various reasons I felt it was time to do another one.

I wish more liveloopers would organize such a festival. It doesn’t have to be a mammoth, several-days-70-loopers festival such as Rick Walker’s festivals in Santa Cruz (which he now has stopped doing because it kept him busy for months). This Cologne festival presented 10 acts again (this time, 9 soloists and 1 trio) and so was small in comparison. Many people seem to think that it is very difficult or lots of work to do that, but in fact, it is not so much work, but lots of fun, especially if one chooses nice loop musicians and everything turns out to be a success. It helped a lot that the cultural office of Cologne and the culture trust of the Cologne-Bonn Sparkasse bank sponsored me again to an extent that allowed me to hire people who did sound, videotaping, video projection, photography, and other support work.

Cologne Loopfestival 2011
Cologne Loopfestival 2011 / Image (c) Alan Jaras

Some of the loopers stayed in hotels, but Georgina Brett, Per Boysen, and the boys from Darkroom stayed at our house.

The day of the festival was very warm and sunny … good for us at first, so we could hang out on the terrace in the morning … of course in the evening, there were less people in the audience than we had expected because some of them had preferred a lazy evening in a beer garden over hours of difficult music in the darkened hall of the Loft …


Setting up was less chaotic than one could expect with 12 musicians and tons of electronics all squeezed together on a few square meters. Then Thomas Elbern started with his Twilight Worldz guitar drones, followed by Uwe Schumacher (who I knew from two concerts in his church based KlangSpielRaum) and his world music influenced improvisations on bass, percussion, and voice …


Patty Stucki sang, played synths and saxophones, and transported the audience into other worlds …

… before I entered the stage with my guitar and delivered several quite multifaceted pieces of music, some of which were successful (i.e. came out similar to my plans) and some didn’t. Oh well. I am still learning!

Sjaak Overgaauw had been inspired by the first Cologne loopfestival to create his own annual festival in Antwerpen. His Premonition Factory produced beautiful ambient music, and after this, David Cooper Orton played guitar somewhere between folk, rock, jazz, and minimal music. Both Sjaak and David had been among my livelooping colleagues in Santa Cruz in 2009 …

It was a special treat for me to finally see Georgina Brett on stage. I had met her in London in 2007 where she introduced me to her ethereal vocal canon music. This time she sung a complex 30 minute piece based on words by Pythagoras. The video backdrop I had created for her, starring slowly moving psychedelic jellyfish (which I had recorded in an aquarium in Oregon) was a great visual addition to her composition I thought. (Georgina was too concentrated to even notice 🙂 )

Georgina was followed by Stockholm based looper Per Boysen, one of my favorite looping musicians (I remember being in awe watching him on festivals in Zürich and Rome). Instead of guitar, flute, or saxophone, he presented his newest instrument, a Chapman stick. It seems that a good musician can create magic on just about any instrument!

Reyn Ouwehand from Amsterdam was the only livelooper I hadn’t met before. He turned out to be not only fun to spend time with, but also a much more proficient keyboard player than I had expected – jawdropping even. He finished his set with a nice impromptu improvisation with Georgina.

And finally, Darkroom (Andrew Ostler and Michael Bearpark with Andrew Booker on electronic percussion) delivered a beautiful and relaxing piece of electronic music that reminded me of Krautrock psychedelia, probably due to the synth sequences created by Os.


We came home after the gig, exhausted but happy, and stayed up late. On the next morning, Sjaak and Ingrid and Patty came to watch us having breakfast, Georgina and Per did the dishes … some of us stayed until the evening, talking about music, but only Per stayed another night and left on Monday afternoon.


What a great weekend with such nice people! I wish we could all stay together for longer, but of course many of the loopers are parents and have to go back to their families and workplaces … the looper island that Michael Klobuchar dreams of will probably remain a dream …


Here is a very nice 5 minute WDR3 radio feature about the festival, containing short interviews and music snippets by Reyn, Patty, Thomas, Georgina, and Uwe:

(photos taken by Andrew Ostler, Mike Bearpark, Petra Schulten, Mike Gürgens, and myself)

Soft Drugs in Antwerp

I did a Saturday/Sunday trip to Antwerp to visit the Livelooping Festival, the 3rd one organized by Sjaak Overgaauw. Except for the bad traffic jams that I got into on the highway, I found that Antwerp is not really far from here – less than 3 hours.

 
I had booked a hotel that looked cheap and good on the website. Well let us say I will look for another hotel should I come back to the next loop festival. But the area was interesting – it was a Jewish quarter of town, and I saw lots of Jewish couples walking around the place wearing very traditional cloths and very strange cylindrical fur hats that I haven’t seen before anywhere.

Living in Germany, I’m not used to seeing traditional Jews because understandably, very few of them live here. I saw lots of people from many countries in Antwerp, and I heard many languages. A young man talked loudly into his mobile, in a language that I didn’t recognize, while taking a leak standing beside me in the toilet of some cafe. Antwerp somehow reminded me a little bit of Manhattan – even the relatively small city park with its ponds and bridges reminded me of Central Park. I liked that a lot.

 
Lots of interesting shops, some of them selling things that I didn’t recognize. And the chocolateries – oh my god. Soft drugs (I am clearly addicted to chocolate), and beautifully set up. And expensive.

 
I visited the bank of the Scheldt, a broad river flowing by the city into the nearby Atlantic.

 
A ponton made loud and deep water noises. I recorded a few minutes using my little digital recorder (this time it was wearing its new wind protection, and looked like a muppet with a wild hairdo) – click the arrow to hear water, seagulls, church bells, and traffic noises of Antwerp.


 
Hungry from walking. Apple pancake and coffee. Good. Then back into the city roads and early evening. Time to walk to the venue.

 
I first met with Kirstin, Facebook friend, synth player, and fan of Sjaak’s music. It was nice to talk face to face instead of using facebook (we hardly knew each other in real life). Then to the venue together for a couple of hours with ambient music, drones, and loops.

 
Some of the livelooping music was quite amazing. Sjaak’s ambient synthscapes were deep and hauntingly beautiful. Welsh guitarist Simeon Harris also created sounds and textures that were very beautiful, shimmering and complex – I wish I knew his trade secrets … but I think gear is involved that I cannot afford at the moment. Flute and sax player Theo Travis used relatively modest gear, but his playing technique and compositional skill was outstanding. A very enjoyable and inspiring evening.

I walked home to my less-than-convincing hotel, slept for a few hours, and got up early. I drove through the Schelde tunnel and visited St. Anna, a popular recreation area for Antwerp citizens. You can see the city from there. If you walk around a bit, there are also views of, er, modern architecture and chemical industry areas, maybe not quite as beautiful as the Antwerp skyline, but in the early Sunday sunshine, everything looked shiny and fresh.

 
After a croissant or two for breakfast, I drove to Sjaak’s and Ingrid’s place for coffee. The boys had just gotten up and were busy transferring video files to portable hard disks. I also met Coco again, the cheese loving red tomcat that can make funny faces.

 

Walk The Dog

We took a long walk near Lindlar with my old friend Thomas and Chikai, his friendly Akita Inu dog, past the quarry where I had recorded a few midwife toads a while ago, and beyond it into a very beautiful open landscape of large fields and hills that I wasn’t familiar with although it is just half an hour away from here.


 
The sky was amazingly blue. Sabine couldn’t stop exclaiming how beautiful it was everywhere around. I had to agree.

 
What a beautiful walk. We came home happy and very hungry and ate lots of chocolate.

 
Bonus track:
This looks like a Porsche covered in red, and fast asleep. It was parked near a house that we walked by during our walk. I thought you might like it too, so here it is.

When The Wind Quiets Down

 
when the wind quiets down
there is a vast stillness all around.
some very distant sounds
of a crow or a car –
tiny streaks on
an wide empty blue canvas

from the hilltop
far away horizons, timeless
and silent.
mid-February sun begins
to warm up the world
stirring up fragrances of soil and grass

there is a promise
not only of spring
but also of something much larger
that my little brain can’t grasp
something too huge to take in
something wonderful

Solid Like Hematite

back at Kloster Schöntal with many old friends … each one a different color

 
deep in the west, a very thin moon
we’re very lucky to have a large moon like that
it stabilizes the earth rotation,
making regular seasons
and enabling life on earth

 
a walk under a very blue very wide empty sky
a sparkling sense of joy
little glowing dots seem to surround me
an exuberant lightness

 
the triangle of desire, self-rejection and hope
keeping us fixated in a prison.
it seems so human, so life-giving to have hope
„the life energy of it“
but then, no animal seems to need hope
and aren’t they the ones who are full of life energy?

 
the deep seated desire for love and acceptance
(we used to live in tribes without which survival was unlikely)
searching for it on the outside
getting some, losing it, never really safe
all the time unaware of the true love
until it comes to pick us up

 
sitting at the computer desk, waiting for the show to begin, chewing cardamom …

 
the conviction that I cannot do anything
the conviction that I have to do it all myself
how can both coexist?

 
I finally slept ok in the third night
to wake up at 6 out of a dream
in which I remembered myself as a young child
my own early childhood innocence and openness
was so moving that I had to cry.
images of old grown-ups in comparison
they were all distorted, grimacing, and sick of their lives,
sick of madness from having forgotten themselves for too long.

then that woman (not one that I know in real life)
she was like … the archetypal good mother
I embraced her and cried on her shoulder
moved by the beautiful memory of my own
long forgotten innocence,
and I woke up with this feeling. How strange
and completely unexpected

 
walking through the yard,
a friendly white cat comes to say hello
while the eternal flock of black birds
still circles the spires, shouting
as it will in a thousand years from now

 
spending much of the day taking care of
a dear friend who is in deep distress
did palpably consume some of my own energy.
I lie in bed after midnight with headphones
carried into sleep on the wings of an angelic lullaby
sung by another dear friend

 
coming from the toilet at 4am
the sky is full of bright large stars
reminding me of that painting
3 hours later, all is grey and wet from rain
and the birds sing early spring songs

 
still suffering from the previous day,
something becomes quiet.
What a luxury to be able to read a few Hafiz poems
before getting up.
It sets my mind back on track.
All is happening on its own.
And I know this. What a relief

 
later, the topic of hatred and the urge for revenge
the being cut off from all of this
(aggressive behaviour was forbidden, unthinkable
so there is something old and unresolved) –
I am unable to access this energy.
A major part of my unconscious seems to still be
mostly unresolved and packed away
while the sense for unicity and the nonconceptual
is already growing, all following its own plan,
bypassing this white spot on the map as it were
„you don’t need more experiences of unity“
i feel like a beginner
deficient and insecure. Why did I come here anyway?

 
„mindful work“ practice in this group can be anything
from needlework to cleaning up or gardening
to learning a choir piece
(I hear them down the hall, slowly getting there)
I sit alone in the hallway, mastering talk recordings.
The woman with the bell comes by and rings –
stop and be present …
resume work with the second bell signal
(it is so hard to stay present with computer work
at home almost impossible, it works better here)

and being present vs. being lost in the trance of thinking
can be heaven vs. hell – more than that
this goes way beyond what the mind can imagine

 
„dedicating this work to the awakening of all beings“

 
she feels stuck, without hope.
he asks her, is there anything you want to do?
she says, „yes there is.
I want to cry so loud that all the windows shatter at once“.
Yes! let us cry together, there are enough windows
for both of us to shatter. This energy
needs to be free.

 
early morning, the cathedral shrouded in mist
waking up after a good night’s sleep
my heart is still heavy
I can’t feel where this weight comes from
so often, this inner life is inexplicable
and so often, subject to change
on short notice
„stay with your experience“
rule of thumb
and always the wisest thing to do

 
an hour with a white-bearded man
looking at my heavy heart
doing various breathing exercises on the mattress
nothing spectacular or difficult,
but bright and light new rooms opened easily for a while,
rooms in myself that I had never entered before.
I want my body back.
I WANT MY BODY BACK!!!
when the convictions (saying I can’t do it) give way and dissipate
and the stories about deficiency and disconnection cease,
then I’m here, I’m at home, I lack nothing,
and something seems to reunite in love.
So easily!

 
„fake it till you make it“ I have to remember this advice.
Find a way, do whatever works
until the voices stop and the joyous simplicity
(that was there all the time)
can stabilize

 
another walk together over the hill
to the sacred spring cave
sitting in the bright February sun, talking, looking at it
and then back to coffee over muddy paths

 
positions and perspectives
how much they shape what we think we are
what would happen if they were all absent?

 
my two partners in the triad I worked in,
they both came to feel like newborn babies
one of them looking at her own hands in amazement
moving her feet
feeling insecure and happy

 
another foggy morning
rows of large trees along the river
populated with mistletoes
their tops fading into grey

 
the question of existence itself
inquiring into the feeling of existence
(grey and solid – like hematite? hmm)
different flavors of presence
still or exuberant
coming and going
the great joy of discovering together
what being home means

 
my black desperation when I lost it
my deep joy of finding it again
„hold it both at the same time“
getting beyond that dualism.
Ok, I’ll try that –

 
spacious presence without thinking or knowing
simplicity and peace
all the different flavors of the transcendent
and there are many more.

I come back from the walk
hiking shoes full of mud underneath

 
„when we know presence, when we are in touch with, and feeling presence, we are in touch with being“
 

The White Spikes

This happens when it is very cold and foggy. No fun to take walks because the cold creeps into your coat, but then everything looks like a fairytale landscape, or like those strange infrared photos where the sky is black and trees are white. Everything is covered by tiny ice crystals. People who walk through this frozen fog eventually seem to get grey hair as even their hair gets covered by ice crystals.

 
I took a very short walk just near our house – enough ice covered tree beauty to find here.

Endless Blue Silence

Sunday after the birthday party, taking care of a slight hangover, cleaning up the house. I was lazy but Sabine convinced me that we should take a walk, and maybe not one of our short standard walks around the hill, but something a little more special. The weather was cold and sunny, spectacular compared to most of the rather grey January.

We drove to a village called Frangenberg, near Linde, a few miles from here, and took a round walk around the hills at Breidenbach and Spich, under a deep blue sky, with wonderful views. The end-of-January sun had already some power, and there was a hint of early spring.


 
We discovered an old stone cross, nothing unusual in this area, but this one (150 years old) had my name chiseled into it … hmmm …


 
Sometimes we stopped and listened … there was the hum of a very far away plane, surrounded by a silence that was deep and rich and stretched out far in all directions.


 
Back home we had cherry cake and coffee and then we put these images on my computer and looked at them and had half of the chocolate candy box that Vera and Michael had given to me yesterday … they were REALLY good